


Ascend

by smallenoughtofit



Series: Legacy [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Bisexual Finn, Bisexual Male Character, Brainwashing, Canon Divergent, Finn is a Jedi, Force Ghosts, Gay Poe, Mentions of socioeconomic status, Multi, No Spoilers, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, On the Run, Pansexual Kylo Ren, Past Abuse, Past Child Abandonment, Pining, Pregnancy, Protective Finn, Protective Rey, Rey is Not a Palpatine, Rey's last name is Jedi, Skywalker parenting, Social Commentary, Teenagers, Violence, actual battles in this, blocked memories, finn has 5 kids, ignoring TROS, jonas my smol bi son, jonas quorvin, physical separation, spoilers in the tags, tags will change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-02-22 12:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 61,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22883161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallenoughtofit/pseuds/smallenoughtofit
Summary: After being missing and presumed dead for months, Rey Jedi, known around the galaxy, has been found alive and well.Her padawan, 15-year-old Jonas Quorvin, is still missing. He's lost, somewhere in the Galaxy, with a now-redeemed Ben Solo. Who, unbeknownst to the rest of the galaxy, happens to be his father. And bound to Rey Jedi.Facing down the First Order, Supreme Leader Snoke, and a powerful generation of Dark Sider Force users on one side and a Resistance force bent on tracking them down, Rey, Ben, and their family are forced into more impossible situations and the fate of the Galaxy itself hangs in the balance.
Relationships: Finn/Original Character(s), Poe Dameron/Original Male Character(s), Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Legacy [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/813606
Comments: 58
Kudos: 66





	1. Hello and Thank You

**Author's Note:**

> It's here!!!
> 
> Thanks to the amazing

This beautiful image is courtesy of [Mrs. Mancusipa](https://mrsmancuspia.tumblr.com/post/184227187457/commissions-open-no-background-included-ask-via) who did some absolutely amazing work. This is what Jonas (left), Rey (middle), and Ben (right) would look like right at the end of Alloy. 

I thought it would be a nice way to start this new journey! 


	2. The biggest liar in the world is They Say.

**_“The biggest liar in the world is They Say.”_ ― Douglas Malloch**

The rumors began within an hour of Rey Jedi's return to the Resistance. 

They trickled from the med bay to the armory to the repair bays to the storerooms and on and on. They rippled out in whispers and frantically typed messages, growing in strength, incredulity, and audacity with every retelling. Within less than a standard day, the entire Holonet knew that Rey Jedi had been discovered, alive, on the desolate planet of Athiktos. This was a confirmed fact. 

It was the only one. 

Other rumors, unconfirmed by either the Resistance, the Jedi, or photographic evidence, trailed in the wake of this first great fact. 

"Rey Jedi defected to the First Order and was taken prisoner by the Resistance. They're going to announce a public execution in four days!" 

"Kylo Ren was killed by the Resistance, but Jonas Quorvin was killed in the process." 

"No! Ren murdered Quorvin and Rey Jedi took revenge on him by killing him." 

"Kylo Ren murdered Luke Skywalker with his bare hands and then kidnapped Jonas Quorvin." 

"I heard Jonas Quorvin joined Kylo Ren and the First Order." 

"If he did, he'd have to be at the Resistance." 

"What if Kylo Ren was his father the whole time?" 

"Rey Jedi and Kylo Ren are secret lovers and tried to escape to Casavike to live out in exile." 

"Actually, they ran to Ach-To." 

"I heard it was Dagobah." 

"No, it was definitely Casavike. Who'd want to live out some romantic escape on Dagobah?" 

"Someone who knows _no one_ would follow them." 

*****

[On the Holonet Messageboard < **Jedi** > : _**Jonas Quorvin Whereabouts and Origin Discussion**_ ] 

**JFan4456** : Jonas Quorvin is the natural child of Rey Jedi. This is absolutely obvious. As I said in my original post above, his father is clearly one of the knights of Ren. There's no way of being 100% sure since there is only one image of a knight of ren without a helmet and she couldn't be Jonas's father for obvious reasons.  
**GoldenRodQueen** : _@JFan4456_ I agree with you, except Jonas Quorvin's father is 100% Zhetam Lylin. He's also probably the reason why Rey Jedi even came back to the Resistance in the first place!!!! You can see the evidence here: [Zhetam Lylin Jonas Quorvin Father Discussion], but it's just true.  
**JFan4456** : _@GoldrenRodQueen_ I've seen all the evidence for the "Zhet Lylin" theory and it's all bs I can't believe any intelligent person would think that.  
**JedisAreForBanthas** : [THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN REMOVED SINCE IT VIOLATES OUR COMMUNITY GUIDELINES]  
**JFan4456** : _@JedisAreForBanthas_ wtk? Jonas Quorvin is kriffing 15! His parents have decided to treat him like one of the Galaxy's Universal Police, so I care about who gets to join the special club that doesn't have to follow any laws, but I'm not "after" a 15-kriffing-year-old's ANYTHING.  
**GoldenRodQueen** : _@JFan4456_ oh look who got himself banned  
**MrsLorth87** : _@GoldenRodQueen_ good riddance. Kriffing perv 

*****

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Durian Terius asked his partner, who was pouring over a holoscreen and not listening, a month after Rey Jedi returned from Athiktos, "do you think Master Jedi looks different?" 

"Different how?" Jope Onasi asked, lifting his dark eyes to look at his partner in earnest. 

"Well, like... bigger?" Terius asked slowly. 

Onasi set his work aside now, his already-narrow dark eyes becoming slits as he pressed his lips together in bemusement and leaned forward. Terius rolled his eyes and flopped back on his bed, arms stretched wide. 

Immediately, Terius regretted his theatrics as stretched the still-healing skin on his chest and grunted in pain. 

"See, that's the Force punishing for talking bad about a jedi," Onasi said, smirking.

"I don't think that's how the Force works," Terius mumbled, sitting up slowly.

"Like you'd know." 

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

"Okay, focus, but I'm serious. I think... it's been a while since I've seen her, since, you know-"

"The whole 'being on a deserted planet' thing."

"Yeah, besides that thing, she looks different. She, well, it kind of looks like Master Rey put on some weight since she got back." Terius said slowly.

Onasi raised his eyebrows, "wow, babe, never thought you'd be here talking about a woman's weight."

Terius groaned again, "I'm saying this all wrong." 

"Oh, yeah. 100%."

"Do you think Master Rey could be pregnant?" 

"Do I-?" Onasi broke off, staring at his partner in earnest, "who- who could have gotten her pregnant?"

"Well," Terius shrugged, "I mean, she was on Athiktos with Kylo Ren and Jonas Quorvin, right?"

"Oh kriff."

"I know."

"Kriff, Durian!"

"I know."

"We're kriffed, whatever happened." 

"So you agree with me? You think she could be?" Terius asked earnestly, taking his partner's hand. 

"I mean, you've been pregnant before, too, so you know more than me," Onasi said.

Terius snorted, "of course that's what you'd settle on."

"I'm just trying to be supportive."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

After a moment's silence, Jope Onasi said suddenly, "Durian, if she's pregnant, then there will be another Jedi, right?"

"With Kylo Ren for a dad!"

"Well, your dad sucks and you're okay."

"Okay, you're right. It'll probably be fine."

"Totally."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

Despite their certainty that everything would be "fine", the two Resistance soldiers didn't share their suspicions with anyone else or loosen their clasped hands for a long time. 

*****

 **[CPN BREAKING NEWS BULLETIN == CORUSCANTAN PUBLIC NEWS CONFIRM REY JEDI FOUND ALIVE]**

"We interrupt this regularly-scheduled program with a Special Breaking News Bulletin from Coruscantan Public News. I'm Jett Arcada. CPN can now confirm from sources within the Resistance that Master Rey Jedi is alive and well. She was found about a standard week ago on the surface of the planet Athiktos and is in stable condition. The only thing we can be certain of right now is that her injuries were minor and that she is in good health. We cannot substantiate any claims about the status and welfare of Jonas Quorvin, who has been rumored to have also been on Athiktos. More details to follow in the coming days. 

I'm Jett Arcada and this has been a CPN Breaking News Bulletin." 

*****

Rey Jedi stared up at the ceiling of her medical room. She lifted one of her legs a bit, pointing her toes to stretch her stiff legs and knees. She couldn’t remember exactly how long she’d been here, but it had only been a few hours, she was sure. 

The door slid opened and Rey sat up on her elbows. She expected to see a doctor, but instead she was greeted with the beautiful face of Todra Alucard. 

“Todra!” Rey said eagerly, standing up to hug her friend. Todra’s long black hair was thrown up into a messy bun and she had dark circles under her eyes, but she looked good. The last time Rey had seen her, Todra had just given birth to twins with her husband, Finn, but that was more than six months ago. Rey hugged Todra tightly, burying her face in Todra’s shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of the spices she liked to cook with from her homeland. 

Rey leaned against her friend, “how are you?” she asked. 

“Good,” Todra said “Rey, how are _you_? You just spend SIX MONTHS on Athiktos! With Kylo Ren! And- I-” Todra broke off, shrugging helplessly, “I am so glad you’re alive.” She stepped back and sat down on the examination bed next to the spot Rey had just vacated. Rey sat down next to her, flipping her hair over her shoulder. Todra hurriedly wiped at her eyes, which were still red from the tears she shed earlier, probably for hours after she’d found out that Rey was alive. Apparently, the entire galaxy had thought them gone and no one had been looking for them. 

Everyone assumed that they’d been on Luke Skywalker’s ship when it exploded, destroyed by a First Order missile, and their bodies had disappeared into the Force. They’d been ceremonially laid in a tomb that only contained the remnants of R2-D2, who had also been utterly destroyed in the blast. 

“I’m, glad to see you, too,” Rey said. She stood in front the woman who had become one of her closest friends and decided to throw any hesitancy aside, “Todra, do they know where Jonas and Ben are?”

“No,” Todra said. She didn’t look at Rey, but toyed with her wedding band. Rey knew Todra was trying to not overwhelm her, but Rey could feel the uncertainty, pain, and fear rolling off of her friend in waves that felt loud enough to shake the walls, at least to her. It took Rey a long moment to understand why Todra felt so worried and afraid rather than happy, but then it hit her: Todra knew that Rey was pregnant. 

Deciding to take the pressure off Todra, Rey took her hand, “I’m pregnant.” She said quietly.

“Oh, Rey…I know...” Todra said. She turned to face Rey, her dark eyes wide. Rey pressed her lips together, tears welling in her eyes. She wiped at them as Todra said, “How do you feel about this?” Todra asked.

“Scared.” Rey admitted, “but happy.” She brushed a hand through her hair. “I’m going to have a baby. A real baby.”

“Rey, you should sit down. You- are you really pregnant? They told me outside but I didn’t believe it.” Todra said. When Rey looked into her face, she could see the dark circles under Todra’s eyes that matched Finn’s; the Alucard household had all had poor sleep for months, it seemed. 

“I- How did they tell you?” Rey asked. She didn’t care- she trusted Todra with her life, but it was still off that the medics would be so open with her condition.

“I’m still your medical contact,” Todra said, smiling.

“Oh, good,” Rey said, leaning her head on Todra’s shoulder as her friend slowly ran her fingers through her hair.

“They want you to talk to a counselor,” Todra said. 

Rey sighed and nodded. They were just trying to help. She had to remember that this was all coming out of a well-intentioned place, but she didn’t need counselling, she needed her husband and son. 

“Rey,” Todra said gently, “Everyone outside- the doctors- believes you’ve been raped.”

Rey closed her eyes as her shoulders fell. She put her head in her hand.s Tears welled in her eyes as she shook her head, “No. No, he didn’t.” 

“Rey, did he-”

“No!” Rey said. Jerking her head up suddenly, “He wanted to get together and I told him to wait and he did. He didn’t say anything or pressure me- didn’t touch me. I went to him. I asked to marry him.” She laughed tensely, “I initiated sex the first time. There wasn’t anything I did that wasn’t my choice.” 

“Rey,” Todra said gently. She took Rey’s pale hands in one of her own olive-skinned ones, “no one would blame you if something happened. It doesn’t make you weak or anything.”

“I know,” Rey whispered, looking in her friend’s dark eyes, “but Todra, I promise, he didn’t do anything. We- We just fell in together.” 

Todra hesitated, her eyes roaming over Rey’s face. Clearly, she was searching for information, for data. She’d spent years as an analyst and was always cautious about making conclusions until she had everything she wanted. However, after a heartbeat, she settled on Rey’s eyes again, then nodded, “alright, Rey. I believe you.” 

Rey smiled, “thank you, Todra. I- I’m going to need someone in my corner.”

“I’m right here. I’ll be here the whole way,” Todra said, nodding firmly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> QUESTION OF THE UPDATE:
> 
> Which character are you most excited to see again?


	3. What We Become Depends On What Our Fathers Teach Us At Odd Moments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating tonight because I have some stuff to do tomorrow
> 
> QUESTION OF THE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/186083488@N06/49744570567/in/dateposted-public/)

**“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum**

“Stop! That’s mine!” Jonas Quorvin shouted, running after the pickpocket. The stranger turned down an alley and Jonas, teeth bared, turned after them. He was still unused to the grimy duracrete of Coruscant, however, and he overshot the alleyway, skidding on the filthy ground. He put a hand down to catch himself, then used the Force to strengthen his forearm to support his weight as he launched his body forward into the alley, closing the gap between him and the pickpocket. Jonas cursed under his breath, shaking his hand behind him as he ran, trying to rid it of the traces of grime.

In the four weeks since Jonas and Ben had started hiding out in Coruscant, they’d managed to keep a low profile. In fact, they’d even rented a room at a boarding house and gotten jobs at a nutribar plant. It had been a temporary way to make legal money and give themselves a chance to listen in on the progress of the war, but kriff if Jonas hated having to guard his pockets so fiercely.

After a month of having to listen in on the intentions of everyone around him, he’d finally slipped up and gotten his purse stolen.

Was it a lot of money?

No, but it was the principle.

He could probably leave it, but he’d spent four long weeks being pushed around by beings larger or superior to him at work without complaint. His dad was older and had the look of a man who’d seen some things, so he was left alone more often than not. Sometimes the sentients around his age might try to talk to him, to share stories of a hard life made harder, but Dad didn’t engage much. He kept his head down, which just made him more mysterious.

Jonas, on the other hand, might as well have been a fresh side of meat hanging up in one of the freezer transport cars.

The thief leapt up onto a window ledge more than two stories up. Jonas froze, mouth agape. The face under the hood was definitely human- or at least humanoid, but he didn’t know any species who could do that- not without the Force.

The sound of the thief’s footfall on the roof above him was enough to snap him out of his shock and give him enough fuel to keep going. Whoever this force-sensitive thief was, they lacked the finesse that anyone with training would have, which was Jonas’s clear advantage; Jonas had been reaching out into the Force since he was six. He knew how it felt, how to use it for his bidding, and how to integrate it with his own body to a point that verged on instinctual.

Jonas took a running leap, using the Force to pull himself up. He followed the stranger, level by level. He used one foot to push off one side of the building, which had been built with a loading dock and accompanying L-shaped rear structure that let Jonas move between the two halves of the corner, building momentum. It would have been faster to go straight up the window ledges, like the thief was, but this way he wouldn’t land in the same spot as the stranger and could see an ambush coming.

Above Jonas, the thief cursed. Finding a particularly good foothold, Jonas launched himself onto the roof, past the stranger just as the young- Jonas was sure it was a young person- jumped onto the roof themselves.

Using the head start the thief thought they had and his own momentum, Jonas kicked at the thief’s shoulder, knocking them off-balance. The moment he landed, Jonas rolled back onto his feet and spun. He didn’t have much of an advantage and wasn’t going to waste it. He tackled the stranger, bowling them over and slamming them onto the ground. The figure cursed, his head narrowly missing a particularly bad-tempered gatro, which scurried away, shrieking its displeasure.

The stranger spun, punching half-blindly since their hood had snagged on their head a bit, but Jonas batted the fist away and struck at the thief's face. He was rewarded with a punch to the jaw from the other side as well as gloved, very human hands grabbing for his hair.

Jonas had grown up learning how to fight, but this stranger fought dirty. Gida’smoo had always been taller and generally stronger than him, as had the Resistance cadets that his masters had brought for him to spar with often, but there had been a distinct lack of desperation in those fights that Jonas knew would be here. Battlefields were different than back-alley scrabbles for money or freedom.

The thief made the mistake of getting one of his hands too near Jonas’s mouth, probably trying to aim for his eyes. Jonas bit down, hard, on the area between his forefinger and thumb and was rewarded by a half-shouted curse.

Jonas was glad it hurt; the gloves were filthy and it was absolutely disgusting. Even if he survived this fight, he’d probably put something in his mouth with enough bacteria on it to kill him. Finally, Jonas let out a snarl. He set up and threw out a hand, using the force to pin the thief down.

Jonas felt someone using the Force was pushing back against his shield. It was nowhere strong enough to break his grip, but Jonas could feel it. He bent down and shoved the hood back, revealing a young human man with dark skin and eyes of the brightest and palest blue that Jonas had ever seen.

“You’re a Jedi,” The young man said.

_Dad is going to kill me._

“You are too,” Jonas murmured.

“Holy Kwath, you’re a Jedi!” The young man hissed again, his eyes widening. He had obviously expected a denial. His hands trembled, still pinned to his sides, but didn’t move.

“You have the Force,” Jonas murmured. He reached into the man’s jacket pocket to grab his money and shove it into the inner pocket of his jacket.

“What?” The young man asked, frowning. He was so shocked that he didn’t protest when Jonas took the money from him. Though, if Jonas was in that same position, he probably wouldn’t have said much. It was nearly impossible to disarm someone who didn’t need a physical weapon to be dangerous.

“That thing you just did, that’s the Force,” Jonas said, waving to the alley behind them. He sighed, looking down at his bruised knuckles. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, his hands had begun to really hurt. He stood and walked over to the roof access door, leaning against it before he loosened his grip on the young man. If he tried anything, Jonas would use the Force without hesitation - and they both knew who would win.

Grunting in discomfort as he slowly got up, the thief kept watching Jonas, who contented himself with leaning his head back against the side of the access door. The young man frowned, stepping closer and inspecting Jonas carefully. Jonas forced himself not to close his eyes or let his guard down, watching the thief walk closer. When the stranger stepped into the light, Jonas blinked in surprise; he was a lot younger than Jonas originally thought. He’d been expecting a man, perhaps one around twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Instead, the force-sensitive thief was only really a boy of maybe seventeen or eighteen.

“What’s your name?” Jonas asked, looking up at the stranger. The boy was tall, barely two or three years older than Jonas, with dark hair that was cut close to his head the way Finn kept his. His blue eyes, though, seemed to shine in the strange lights of the Coruscant underworld. Around them, the shadows cast by the massive buildings that towered over whatever small bar or restaurant or brothel they’d come across seemed to swallow the rest of him.

“Ta’el. You?”

“Darren Erach,” Jonas said. Ta’el put out a hand and Jonas shook it. He quickly put a small shield over his core, deciding to make sure that Ta’el couldn’t pull a knife and stab him in the stomach.

“How have you been hiding out here of all places?” Ta’el asked, looking around.

“My father and I just moved here,” Jonas admitted. He needed to be careful at this point because Jonas Quorvin, famous Jedi padawan, was dead. If someone realized that he was alive, then they might look too closely at Ben. Then it would be a race between the First Order and the Resistance as to who could kill his dad first.  
“You’ve just been hiding throughout the galaxy?” Ta’el asked, “and you picked Coruscant, the center of the Core, to go to next?”

Jonas shrugged, “my dad and I figured, with so much of the outer rim getting swept up by one side or the other, a densely populated place is the best spot to be invisible.”

“And you blow your cover right away,” Ta’el said, raising his eyebrows.

“We don’t have a lot of money,” Jonas muttered, looking away, “besides, you have the Force, too.”

“I don’t,” Ta’el said, shaking his head, “that was just years on the streets.”

“Look, I’ve had family with the Force since the fall of the Jedi,” Jonas said, which was true while disguising his real identity and family history, “we’ve been on the run for generations. I _know_ what the Force feels like and what’s just “growing up rough”. That was something else,” Jonas said.

Distantly, the sound of an evening factory bell rang out, cutting over the sound of foot traffic and the constant ambient noise of Coruscant. Jonas turned, trying to tell which factory it was coming from. He’d been given today off, but their boss had asked Ben to work another day. Distantly, he saw the lights that signaled the end of Ben’s shift and the beginning of the night shift. He needed to get back to the little room they’d been renting the past few weeks. Ben was going to be starving, and Jonas needed sleep before they went back to work the next day.

“I have to go,” Jonas blurted. He looked at Ta’el, but when he turned back, the boy was gone.

Jonas looked around the roof for a second, then climbed down to the street level. When he turned back on the street, he saw an illegal music vendor selling a copy of Orion Marshall’s first solo album. Jonas smiled to himself, remembering the afternoon that Gida’smoo, his fellow padawan, had made him spend all afternoon listening to the Star Striker’s album. The music had been half-decent, but what had really struck Jonas was how good-looking Orion had been. He had green eyes that had been flecked with gold that had always caught the light in the most beautiful and distracting ways, especially when the group had done interviews.

While Jonas had spent two years _refusing_ to admit how good-looking Orion was, his heart would always skip a beat when their songs came on.

Ta’el, however, might have been the first person Jonas had ever met that made him earnestly think, _Orion Marshall who?_.

And now the most beautiful person Jonas had ever met had vanished.

Jonas looked around the roof for a moment, then closed his eyes and opened his mind. Thousands of minds opened up to him, like flowers in a meadow. He ran his consciousness superficially along all of them, trying to find any of them with the brightness and complexity of the Force.

None of them stood out to him, which was the most surprising to him. Jonas opened his eyes, frowning.

Either this Ta'el had somehow managed to truly disappear or could hide his force signature. Whatever it was, he had learned a valuable survival skill without knowing it. Jonas sighed, wondering what other skills the stranger might have. He looked over the edge of the roof one more time, then grabbed the edge of the roof. He looked over the side, watching the fire escape, then landed on it.

Despite his best efforts, Jonas's feet landed with a heavy crash. He winced, checking for activity in the windows. Nothing moved, so Jonas started climbing down quickly. He landed on the ground, dangling for a moment before he let himself drop onto the ground. That noise, at least, was softer.

Jonas tucked his purse back into the inside of his jacket, then looked around the street to make sure no one was coming. The most difficult part of the area were the gangs of young people of various species, organized by geography. There were tons of shops and kiosks that served food, toiletries, and smokes through a small slot in blaster-proof transparisteel. Despite these measures, the gangs still competed for protection rights for the shops, cafes, and boarding houses. Most of the time, the gangs weren’t particularly bothersome, but Jonas had chased Ta'el between territories.

Jonas wasn't in a gang and had escaped interest in the beginning, but he didn't want to be seen as dancing on the border. He lived and worked in Tagos territory, but now he was standing in Den Te Halu territory. Seeing that no one was coming, Jonas jogged back up the street. People were passing him on both sides of the block, but no one stopped him or looked at him too closely. He held his breath until he was safely back on Tagos duracrete. He didn’t hold any allegiance to anyone, but he needed to get home soon.

Jonas needed to move, and fast. Ben’s shift would be getting out and Jonas wanted to be home before his dad got there. If he played his cards right, he could buy some of the end-of-day vegetables and meat cuts from a kiosk on the way home to add to the dehydrated noodle packs stored in their room.

Jonas ran a hand over his dark hair, tiredly thinking of the days when his mother or Master Luke had cooked for him in their little apartments at the Resistance. They’d always been moving between abandoned Rebel bases or refurbished Imperial bases that the Third Republic had held onto, but The Resistance had also had to live in other places. They’d found and repurposed an old hotel on a planet Jonas couldn’t even remember now, or had spread out among a population of grateful locals who no longer had to pay First Order taxes and were happy to feed the Resistance soldiers for a few weeks if it meant freedom in the long term.

Now, though, he and Ben shared a two-room apartment in a boarding house and ate rehydrated noodles with whatever the cheapest vegetables and meats were available at the end of the day.

As Jonas turned the corner and saw the burly form of Marg-Sett Roosh, he was vividly reminded of the Mystery Rations he’d endured on Saw Gerrera’s old Athiktos base, and decided to just be grateful.

At least everything he ate here was definitely food and definitely younger than both his parents.

The blue-collar areas of Coruscant were extensive and deeply rooted. On another planet, the manufacturing sector would be its own continent alone. Jonas Quorvin was just another anonymous speck in the middle of massive factories, warehouses, and foot traffic. As he walked, he shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled his hood up to keep his hair from getting too damp from the chilling water vapor that drifted down from several steam vents overhead.

Jonas opened his mind as he walked, keeping his eyes on the flat and under-maintained road in front of his feet. He wondered if Ta'el was following him. If he was, this Ta'el might have let his guard down. If he was lucky or if Ta'el was overconfident, then he might be able to catch a glimpse of the boy's Force signature.

Nothing stood out.

Jonas huffed, adjusting the flimsy bag of vegetables on his wrist and walking up a little faster. The vapor was getting heavier, which meant it would probably rain soon.

The Yahone solar panel factory was the largest in the galaxy, and between the two massive production facilities, they generated enough water vapor, heat, and energy to create a localized weather system. After a few months of acid rain years ago, they'd altered their production system so their only vaporous waste was steam, but Jonas didn't own a lot of clothes. He didn't want to go through all of the effort it would take to dry these.

Jonas broke into a jog, giving up on his hood and holding his bag with both his hands. Jumpsuit-wearing and weary figures walked past him, barely glancing up as he hurried past them. The blue of chemical workers gave way to the soft gray of more traditional manufacturing and then the varied, faded, and stained white of meat workers. Ben was among this part of the roiling sea of exhausted and underpaid bodies.

 _If I ever get to the Senate, I'm going to have a serious conversation about wages,_ Jonas thought. As the clouds above his head began to coalesce in earnest, Jonas gave up and broke into an earnest run. Raindrops started falling, fat and heavy, from overhead, but of the workers kept their same slow pace, only putting their hands into their pockets, pulling hoods up or hats down, and hunching their shoulders against the drops.

As the rain started hitting Jonas in earnest, he remembered, vividly, the last day he'd seen his mom.

Jonas took a shortcut down a row of shops that mostly consisted of empty storefronts of smokeshops for various body shapes.

A woman shrieked in frustration as she stepped in a large puddle that Jonas lightly hopped over. He felt bad for her, but he was also glad she'd made a noise or he would have waded in alongside her.  
 _Maybe the news will have a real update on Mom,_ Jonas thought, his heartbeat suddenly jumping up. He'd heard what felt like thousands of rumors about his mother, her welfare, her allegiance, and even his own whereabouts.

None of the outlets had guessed Coruscant, so he guessed the Skywalker habit of moving to deserted planets had worked in his favor. The closest guess had been Corellia, but that was only because of Han Solo.

 _She'll be fine,_ Jonas told himself, trying and failing to settle his nerves. Finn wouldn't let anything happen to her. His mother's best friend had stood by her for more than fifteen years. They'd trained and fought their way across the galaxy for longer than Jonas had been alive. There was no way Finn would stand by as anything happened to her.  
 _What if he sacrifices Ben for her? Would he do that?_

The thought came like a punch in the gut. He forced himself to focus on the path ahead and ignore both the rain and the horrible possibility that he might be on the run for the rest of his life. Ben was powerful, yes, but Jonas couldn't let anyone hurt him. He couldn't allow the Third Republic to get ahold of him, ever. They'd execute Ben Solo, surely without a trial, and the only way Jonas could make sure that never happened was to make sure the Resistance never found him.

Despite the fear roiling in his stomach, he sighed with relief as he stepped under the awning in front of their boarding house. Unlocking the doorway, Jonas trudged upstairs, absently rubbing the excess water off his shoes on a mat and shaking his head, which sent droplets scattering around the absolutely tiny entryway.

"Darren Erach, is that you?" The old landlord called.

"It is!" Jonas called back.

"How is the weather now?"

"Miserable," Jonas said, smiling to himself. He'd had this conversation every single time he walked through the door. Apparently, his landlord thought all weather was miserable and to be avoided at all costs. He walked past the common areas and up the stairs to his and Ben's little room. They had a hot plate in their cramped, two-room quarters, as well as their own refresher. They were fortunate, as several of the other apartments in the boarding house were single rooms or had to share a 'fresher with a suitemate.

Jonas unlocked his room and shouldered the door open, suddenly exhausted, "Hey, Dad," he called.

Ben was stretched out on his bunk, scrolling on a banged-up, third-hand datapad they'd bought when they first arrived in Coruscant, "Hey."

"I got some food for the noodles," Jonas said, holding his bags.

"Oh that looks excellent," Ben said, standing and immediately taking the bags from Jonas's hands. He started spreading them across the counter of their kitchenette, which consisted of a sink, a hot plate, and some counter space.

Jonas sat down heavily on Ben's vacated bunk, then flopped onto his back.

“You holding up okay?” Ben asked, not looking over his shoulder and focusing on the food.

“Yeah,” Jonas said, letting his arm fall over his eyes, “I’m so tired, but I don’t want to sleep yet.”

“I get you,” Ben said, "come on. We can eat and turn in early."

Jonas nodded, then mumbled, without moving his arm, “I met someone today,” he kept his voice casual, but he felt Ben tense, his mind snapping to attention even as he tried to keep himself relaxed. Jonas felt something brush against the edge of his mind and barely had enough time to snap shut the walls around his thoughts before Ben’s probe reached him.

“You could _ask_!” Jonas snapped.

Ben turned around, “I could feel your wariness from the second you got in. I’m your father, so _you_ can get over yourself and stop hiding things from me.”

Jonas grunted, “I met a kid. Someone with the Force.”

“They must be very strong for you to notice that in the time it took you to run in the opposite direction and not engage with them, which is what you should have done,” Ben’s tone was level and controlled, but Jonas could feel his frustration boiling under the service.

“I-” Jonas broke off, “he stole all my credits. I had to get them back.”

Ben groaned, tipping his head back, “tell me you didn’t chase after him.”

“I did-” Ben opened his mouth, but Jonas overrode him, “but it’s okay. I got the credits back. No one saw.”

Ben pinched the bridge of his nose, “Tell me, for the love of all that is good in the Force that he doesn’t know you have the Force.”

“He figured it out.”

“Explain,” Ben’s voice was low and dangerous

“I kind of- I might have- I- he went up this building, right? I had to beat him to there to get my purse back-”

“Sweet Force.”

“-and so I used the Force to up my strength so I could climb up the side of the building, in the corner, you know, and then we wrestled and I pinned him and took my stuff back.”

Ben nodded stiffly, “just tell me. Please please please tell me you didn’t give him your name.”

“I said my name was Darren Errach,” Jonas said.

 _Seriously, I’m not stupid,_ Jonas thought. He didn’t say it, though, when his father’s expression was so stormy.

Ben groaned, rubbed his bearded cheek, and sighed, “Fine. Okay.”

“You’re not mad?” Jonas asked.

“Oh, no, I’m still mad, but you didn’t screw up as much as you might have,” Ben said. He shook his head, "Look, kid, I’m not…” he waved a hand helplessly in the air in front of him, then shrugged and sighed, “I’m not angry at you. I just…”

Ben stood there for a moment, his hand still raised. Finally, he lowered it and hung his head. He pulled down the walls of his mind, letting Jonas inside. Jonas tentatively reached out and probed within Ben's thoughts. The inside of his father's mind reminded him of a kind of dark forest. There was depth and shadow all around, but it didn't feel.. wrong, either. It was as if his mind was built for a sense of shaded, even if it felt like overt darkness. At the forefront of his thoughts, though, was a tangled and knotted layer of fear, and agitation. When Jonas let his consciousness brush over it, he was overwhelmed with the depth and breadth of Ben's worries.

The meager handful of credits they earned at the end of every day. Their too small lodgings. The way Jonas was growing paler and paler after a month here, even though they'd all been able to grow a little tan on the surface of Athiktos, at least during the daytime. The blaster bolts that members of the Resistance had fired on Jonas, on his son.

Suddenly, more images flashed across Jonas's eyes. Worries that were not as concrete.

_First Order stormtroopers marching down their street, looking for the Force users._

_Finn Alucard and Gida'smoo knocking on their door in the middle of the night._

_Jonas, lying dead on a street corner, caught in the crossfire between rival street gangs._

_Ben, clutching an injured hand and knowing he'd be fired if he was unable to work._

_Jonas curled up in bed with some unknown illness and Ben desperately tried to find enough credits to take him to someone._

_Rey, standing on the holoscreen, facing a trial for her love of Ben._

_His wife, forced to hunt them._

_Rey having to choose between Jonas and Ben, a blaster trained on Ben as he desperately tried to find a way out that would let them both live._

_Jonas's new unknown friend, a thief, turning them over to the first bounty hunters that came sniffing around._

"Dad," Jonas croaked, his eyes suddenly so hazy with tears that even the visions in his mind seemed to fade, "Dad, it's okay."

Ben swallowed tightly, "I'm not mad at you. I've got- just got a lot of my mind."

"I'm sorry," Jonas mumbled, "I shouldn't have gone after him." he shifted his feet, unable to think of what to say anything. He took a deep breath, unsure what Ben was going to do. He didn't know HOW to apologize and make it right. This was a dangerous thing, now that he really thought about it. He could have blown EVERYTHING.

If anyone saw him using the Force, then they could be found out. If anyone found them out, then they could be killed by bounty hunters or gang members, or taken by the First Order and killed or taken by the Resistance, who would kill Ben.

Jonas's face grew hot and suddenly, his throat felt tight. He didn't know what to say. There weren't words in Basic for the rush of shame and fear and remorse that curled like a too-large ball in his throat, pushing on his windpipe, "Dad, I'm sorry," he managed to choke out. He felt something light brush against his leg and realized his right hand was trembling.

Ben crossed the room in a step and hugged him tightly, "It's okay, kid," He said. He let his cheek rest against Jonas's head and Jonas hugged him back just as tightly. He had never realized until when they'd first begun to travel alone, how much he'd spent his entire life missing his father. It wasn't just that he was missing a father that would fill that void of unknown parentage for him, but that he missed specifically. Rey was focused, driven, and strategic. She was a kind of relentless that made her intimidating and powerful. Luke was wise and methodical, always trying to work his way around an issue when there was no direct or simple solution. Finn was a collective thinker. He thought about the Resistance and his group in particular as a family, a complete unit. He would give his life every time for his people if he could.

Ben, though, was emotive and expressive. He was also an immovable object, refusing to give up, even in the most relentless of situations. Their factory was the worst to work in and usually turned its employees into soulless and mindless cogs that were replaceable when their bodies broke down. Ben, though, kept his humanity. He kept focused and productive, but he never lost his personhood. He played mindless when the foremen got too close, but he came alive after work, rather than just laying down and sleeping until the next shift.

Jonas didn't know how to do that, how to stand firm in the face of a torrent, but Ben could teach him.

In the meantime, though, Jonas just wanted a hug.

"It's okay, kid," Ben murmured again, "I got you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> QUESTION OF THE UPDATE: what are the best/worst traits of the main and secondary characters?


	4. Secrets Tear You Apart

**“Secrets tear you apart.” ― Mitch Albom, For One More Day**

Rey rubbed her hands together anxiously as the little group arrived in twos and threes to one of the few meeting rooms that weren't currently occupied with some group or another. Rey hadn't wanted to do this late at night, but it wasn't possible to do anything else. The reappearance of her, Jonas, and Ben had thrown the balance of the war into upheaval again, just as their disappearance had done three months ago. 

This was, more or less, another important strategy meeting, but was also a secret one. 

Obran trudged in, wearing pants and a shirt that were so stained with grease and oil that it never had a hope of being clean again. He gave Rey an absolutely radiant smile, even as he pulled a fresh floral bandana from his back pocket and tied his dreadlocks out of his face. Rey beamed back. She and Obran had never been able to spend much time together, even after his marriage to Poe, but in the three or four times they'd seen each other since her return, he'd always looked at her as if she was the most beautiful thing he'd seen. 

It was nice to be appreciated, at least. 

Obran crossed over to her first, wrapping her in suntanned, muscular arms, “how are you?” he murmured.

“Yeah, I am, I promise,” Rey murmured. She leaned into her friend’s touch. He smelled just like he always had and Rey basked in it, letting the notes of oil, engine grease, and sweat flow over her. The clearest mark of Obran’s considerable skill was demonstrated by the fact he wasn’t weighed down by the scent of singed hair. 

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Obran said, leaning back and holding her arms and staring intently into her face, “when Luke… an-and everyone…” he shrugged, swallowing back his words.

“I’m glad to be back,” Rey said. She stepped back and looked around at the others. She cleared her throat and looked at everyone, “um, sit down. We need to talk about everything.” 

Poe put a hand out to Obran, who took it, and the pair sat down together around the circular table. Poe immediately put his head on Obran’s bare shoulder, closing his eyes as he waited for everyone else to settle. 

Todra and Finn sat down on Poe’s other side, sitting side by side and continuing whatever conversation they’d been having when they came in. 

Akuryate was inspecting a tablet carefully as she pulled out her chair, brushing her straight red hair out of her face and sitting down without even looking up. Gida’smoo sat down next to her, looking down at her own holopad and making marks occasionally.   
She glanced up at Rey, met her eyes, and smiled warmly. Rey smiled back, glad that she had at least one person who would hopefully still look at her the same way after this. Gale Pollard, Gida’smoo’s former pilot, settled into a seat next to the former padawan. He leaned back in his chair comfortably. 

Gale Pollard had somehow aged five years in the past two months. He was the only commanding officer of Gida’smoo’s crew that had survived Ladiri. Tahiri and Sa’isa had both been killed along with Luke Skywalker, Rey learned. The idea of two such skilled, capable, and honorable women dying that way made Rey’s heart clench. 

Two women that Rey didn’t recognize had been called in, but Rey assumed that she knew who they were: head of engineering and commander of the naval forces of the Resistance. 

When the door opened, Rey automatically knew who it would be: Zhetam Lylin, commander of the ground forces for the Resistance. 

“I’m Rey Jedi,” Rey said, turning to the two women, “I don’t think we’ve met. Were you two promoted recently?” 

“I was promoted the same day you went missing,” the round-faced woman said, “Rose Tico, head of engineering.”

“I was only promoted two weeks before you came back,” the other woman said, “I’m Paige Tico.”

“You’re… sisters?” Rey asked.

“Yeah,” Rose said, smiling. She really had a lovely smile. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” Rey said, smiling back. She looked around at the others, “so, we all need to talk.” 

Akuryate and Gida’smoo put their holopads away and turned their attention to Rey. 

Rey took a deep breath, “I know where I come from. I know what happened to my parents.” she hadn’t _meant_ to start with that, but it felt out of her mouth before it could stop there. 

“Where did you learn that?” Todra asked, frowning.

“On Athiktos,” Rey said, “a Force Ghost told me.”

"Who?!" Finn blurted. 

"Qui Gon Jinn. He was Obi Wan Kenobi's master, but he was more than that. He appeared to me, Jonas, and Ben on Athiktos."

“He just appeared to you? After you were, what, a Jedi for twenty years?” 

"Yeah, I wasn’t happy about it at first. I kind of resented him… I still do, a little, but Master Jinn came to tell me who my parents are."

"Rey, that's huge. Who are they?" Poe said earnestly. 

"They're his great-niece and her husband."

"That makes you..."

"Qui Gon Jinn's great-great niece, yeah." 

“Woah,” Akuryate said, nodding, “so, that means the Force runs in your family, too.” 

Rey shrugged, “barely, you know? None of his nieces or nephews or great-nieces or great-nephews have the Force. Just me.” 

“I’m so glad you got those answers, finally,” Todra said earnestly. 

Rey nodded, “yeah. Apparently he was the one who found Anakin Skywalker.”

“Full circle,” Finn murmured.

“Totally,” Rey said, the corner of her mouth lifting. 

Obran looked from Poe to Finn to Rey and back again, his mouth open, but his husband stared at the floor, shaking his head slowly. Akuryate, meanwhile, was looking at Rey, her face mostly neutral. 

Gida’smoo, though, was practically vibrating in her chair, “you talked to a Force Ghost? One of the old masters? What was he like?”

“Uh…” Rey trailed off and shrugged, “he seemed quiet and sad, but he _said_ he was watching over me when I was little, but I don’t know.” 

Gida’smoo nodded, “that’s incredible. Isn’t that incredible?!” she turned to look at Poe, who was still staring at the table.

Rey smiled understandingly at Poe and Obran, pointedly avoiding the eyes of Zhet, who was staring at her so intently that she could _feel_ it. Looking at Poe and Obran, it made sense that they would have a hard time fully wrapping their minds around the fact that, after so many decades, there were Force Ghosts again and not even someone they’d known, like Luke. 

“Finn, there are more Force Ghosts out there,” Rey said, leaning across the table, “more than Luke and Master Kenobi. More than Master Jinn, even.”

“I know that,” Finn said, “but they haven’t made any attempt to show themselves, outside of those three. It doesn’t matter if there are 10,000 of them. We don’t see them.” 

“Jonas said he saw Anakin Skywalker, back on Ladiri,” Rey said. 

“ _What?!_ ” Zhet blurted.

Finally, Rey looked at him, “yes. Anakin Skywalker appeared to Jonas. He gave Jonas his lightsaber.”

“How the kriff did Darth Vader get Jonas his lightsaber?” Zhet said.

“‘Darth Vader didn’t give Jonas anything,” Rey grit her teeth and crossed her arms, “Anakin Skywalker appeared to Jonas while he was cornered by Anjat Ren. He saved Jonas and gave him his lightsaber.”

“So your precious Jedi Masters decide not to show up for any of the hundreds of battles over the last twenty years and suddenly show up to deliver a lightsaber that he hid in the Force somewhere?” 

“It wasn’t hidden in the Force. The lightsaber was on Ladiri,” Rey said.

“Wait, what?” Rose said suddenly, bursting in on the tense moment, snapping the tether between the two exes and dragging them back to the group as a whole.

“You told me that there was a sith artifact on that planet!” Paige Tico said, turning to look at Finn and Poe. 

“There was,” Finn said, “it was Darth Vader’s lightsaber, the one he wielded while he served the Empire, not the one that Jonas used.”

“There were two things inside the cave on Ladiri,” Rey explained, “one was an Imperial escape pod, wrecked. I think it caused a cave in, in the back of the cave system, but the main cave was still accessible from the outside. The officers on that ship escaped the destruction of the second Death Star and somehow got ahold of Darth Vader’s lightsaber before they did. It was on board when they crashed. All souls lost on impact, from what we saw.” Rey looked from Finn to Poe, making sure she hadn’t missed anything. 

“That’s right, yeah,” Finn said, nodding. 

“Well, like two years ago, a year and a half ago? Whenever Poe and Obran got married-”

“Two years ago,” Obran said quietly.

“Well, two years ago, a knight of Ren named Tomax Ren found the wreckage. When he was acquiring the lightsaber, a cave-in happened, somehow. He died there and, more than a year later, we found him. By the time we’d found him, he’d been skeletonized,” Rey continued. 

Paige nodded, her face impassive, but her sister was looking between Finn and Rey, her eyes serious and emotive. 

“When we got there, we were waylaid by the First Order. Jonas was fighting with Anjat Ren and lost his lightsaber in the cave. When he tried to summon it, he ended up with Darth Vader’s lightsaber. When he killed Anjat Ren, he saw Anakin Skywalker. We had to run, but Jonas ended up with both lightsabers. On Athiktos, we remade them, so Jonas has both, still.”

“That was the red lightsaber from our rescue,” Zhet growled, pounding a fist on the table, “I _knew_ something was off there.”

“What are you talking about, now?” Paige asked, turning and looking at Zhet.

“When we got Rey safe, me and my squad went after Jonas and Kylo Ren, but Jonas froze us with the Force. He had a red lightsaber, I thought it was Ren’s, but it was Darth Vader’s.”

“It’s Jonas’s now.” Rey said flatly. 

“Jonas used a lightsaber against you?” Paige Tico asked, leaning forward. She looked from Zhet to Akuryate, who was resting her lips against her steepled fingers. As always, Akuryate was silent and watchful, looking between all the various players at the table. 

“Jonas used _the Force_ against us.” Zhet said. He looked at Rey, his dark eyes hard. His emotions were a roiling mess, thick with frustration and resentment, “he pinned me and my squadron in place for almost fifteen minutes-”

“He _**what**_?” 

Gida’smoo, Poe, Rey, and Rose all spoke at the same time. 

“How did he manage to hold an entire squadron?” Gida’smoo demanded, palms flat on the table. 

“Did you say fifteen minutes?” Rey asked.

Poe turned to face Zhet, holding onto Obran’s hand tightly, “He used the Force against you?”

“Yeah, he did!” Zhet said, waving a hand. His exasperation bubbled up so high that Rey could feel it, “he pinned us where we were standing for almost fifteen minutes.”

“That’s how they got away,” Rey said, nodding and crossing her arms.

Zhet looked at her, grinding his teeth, “yes. Unfortunately.”

“He-” Rose Tico broke off, shutting her eyes tightly as she thought, “we have a teenaged force user running around with Kylo Ren? And he used the Force against…” she trailed off. 

_”His own father”_ hung, unspoken, in the air between them all. Zhet seemed to deflate at her words. He’d spent more than a decade with everyone looking at him whenever Jonas was mentioned. It was considered an open secret that Jonas was Zhet’s son. 

Except he wasn’t.

And it was time to tell the Galaxy the truth.

Poe’s voice was tight and almost hoarse, “and he’s wielding Darth Vad-”

“Anakin Skywalker’s!” Rey interjected.

“Rey, that Kyber crystal has been bled. Jonas is wielding a lightsaber that’s been imbued with the Dark side. It was used by Darth Vader,” Finn said. His tone was suddenly so clipped and businesslike that she was reminded of Todra clarifying some piece of information in an official report.

“Okay, fine,” Rey muttered.

“So, Jonas is using both the Red and the blue lightsabers?” Todra asked quietly. She leaned forward, putting a hand on Finn’s knee under the table. 

“Yes,” Rey said.

“He’s literally using a Sith Lord’s lightsaber,” Finn squeaked. 

“This lightsaber is the reason for the Ladiri mission?” Poe asked.

Gida’smoo’s fists clenched on the table, “why didn’t you destroy it? It’s a dark artifact!” 

“Not anymore,” Rey said, shaking her head, “a piece of the emperor latched onto it when he died, instead of fading into the Force. Jonas purified it and reformed both it and Anakin Skywalker’s blue lightsaber. He uses both now.”

“Kriff,” Zhet muttered, putting a hand over his eyes. He mumbled something incomprehensible, but Rey caught the words “just what I need” and “Kylo Ren” and “kid”. 

“Why did Jonas turn on you?” Akuryate asked, frowning, “I didn’t know about that.”

“We didn’t want to tell anyone,” Finn admitted, looking at Rey. 

“But _why_?” Akuryate said earnestly.

“Because he was protecting his father,” Rey said. 

“He was what?” Akuryate said. 

“This leads into the other thing I wanted to talk to you all about,” Rey said. She took a deep breath, “it’s time to confirm the suspicion that many people have had for fifteen years: I am the mother of Jonas Quorvin. Ben Solo is his father.”

"Ben Solo? Ben Solo was a student of Luke Skywalker. He died when the Knights of Ren attacked the school,” Akuryate said, “and that was, what, fifteen years before Jonas was born?”

“Ben Solo didn’t die in the attack on the school. He attacked the school. Ben Solo and Kylo Ren are the same person,” Rey said, her hands pressed flat to the table.

Poe groaned. A chair squeaked as someone leaked their chair back in exasperation. Finn muttered curses under his breath. 

“So Jonas is somewhere in the galaxy with a man who looks like this? A man we don’t have an image of?” Zhet offered, eyebrows high.

“Hang on,” Gida’smoo said. Rey looked up and saw Gida’smoo’s amber eyes were jumping from Rey to Finn and then to Zhet and Poe, “you’re not surprised. Master Finn… you already knew this!”

“I did,” Finn said, nodding, “I was there when he was born.”

“You were?” Akuryate said, leaning forward, “who else knew?”

“I did,” Poe said softly, lifting a hand.

Rey shrugged, looking up at Todra, whose expression was blank. If Todra was surprised by this revelation, or angry that she hadn’t been told sooner, Rey couldn’t tell. Part of her, a fleeting, selfish part, was tempted to reach out, search the meticulously organized thoughts and ideas that she knew were inside. When she’d been looking for Finn’s mind, she’d stumbled upon Todra’s first. It was the most rigidly organized mental structure that Rey had ever encountered, with thoughts and memories arranged and collected like shelves in a library. 

Rey forced herself to look away from Todra and look at Gida’smoo. 

Her padawan’s amber eyes were hard, drilling into her harshly. Rey pressed her lips together, then opened her thoughts to Gida’smoo and felt a swift probe rush into her mind as soon as there was an opening. Gida’smoo entered her brain like a viper, with lightning speed and a strong force behind it. Rey clenched her first, forcing herself not to visibly flinch. Gida’smoo flitted through her thoughts, her worries, her memories of Ben and Jonas and her time on Athiktos. After a heartbeat, Rey gently nudged at Gida’smoo, who withdrew from her mind.

“Luke knew the whole story,” Rey said, calling everyone’s attention back to her, “Dr. Vox Chi knew I was Jonas’s mother and his father was a member of the First Order, but I always let her think he was an officer of some kind. Zhet- ah- found out when Jonas was sick. I told Jonas when he was ten.”

“Jonas _knew_?! He knew and he didn’t tell me?” Gida’smoo said, slamming her hands on the surface of the table.

“I made him promise not to. I only told him so no one could reveal it and use it against him to drive a wedge between us,” Rey said.

“So why do we suddenly want to reveal the secret?” Gida grumbled. 

“Because it’s time,” Rey said, “I’m done hiding. I’m not going to disappear during this pregnancy.”

“You’re pregnant?” Gida’smoo stood up sharply.

“Gida, sit down,” Finn said sternly. 

Gida put out her chin and set down angrily. 

Akuryate groaned, her head falling into her hands, “this is too much. How can we expect the galaxy to react?”

“We can’t lie anymore. Leia Organa was asked to resign over the release of Darth Vader’s identity. Ben Solo was lured to the First Order by these family secrets. I’m done being a symbol who isn’t a person.”

“But this is _such_ a _bad. idea._ ” Akuryate whined. 

“Bad idea or not,” Finn said, “I’m with you.”

“We are all,” Todra said firmly.

Rey nodded. She swallowed tightly, tears suddenly prickling the backs of her eyes. She hadn’t expected to get this emotional about this, but she had been so afraid. She sighed, swiping at her eyes.

“Oh, Rey,” Poe said.

“Honey,” Obran said. She heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back and shook her head wildly.

“Stop,” Rey said, “I’m fine. I’m just tired and I was a little worried about, well, everything.” 

“Don’t worry,” Obran said.

“Oh, Force,” Finn blurted suddenly.

“What?” Rose Tico said, jumping.

“Someone is going to have to tell Chewie!” Finn said, “someone is going to have to _call_ Chewie.”

Rey rubbed her chin, “I vote we make Poe do it.”

“Agreed!” Todra and Finn said at the same time Poe blurted, “hey I had to tell him bad news last time!” 

“How are you feeling?”

Rey looked up to see Zhet sitting next to her in the now practically-empty mess hall. A few pilots, freshly returned from a supply run, were hunched over steaming cups of caf, but otherwise it was empty. 

“Tired,” Rey said, nibbling on the protein packs that Dr. Angavel had recommended for her.

“So, you and Kylo Ren… back together…” Zhet said quietly, sitting next to her, “and then you’re going to tell the entire galaxy that Jonas is his son.”

“Yes, I am,” Rey said, not looking at him and staring at the crumbly end of one of the nutribars. 

“You know, when you and Jonas were missing, people kept coming up to me and saying they were so sorry for my loss. Everyone I met looked at me as if I’d lost a child, and I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I _hadn’t_ lost a child, not really, but on the other hand…” 

“You’d lost someone you loved like a son,” Rey said, finally turning to look at him, to really look. Zhetam Lylin had always looked so young and handsome, with a square jaw, narrow dark eyes, and straight black hair that he had always pulled back in a long tail at the back of his head. Now that she could see him this closely, she could see the faint lines at the corner of his eyes and the crease forming around his mouth. 

Not enough smile lines. 

Too many frown lines.

Just like Ben.

“What happened to us?” Zhet asked suddenly, turning to look at her now.

Rey raised an eyebrow at him. She remembered the last months of their relationship, with all the biting comments and arguments. They’d been losing, sometimes badly, when they faced the First Order and then they’d gone home to fight more. She remembered screaming at him, more than once.

“I don’t mean our relationship,” Zhet added finally. She didn’t need to read his thoughts to know that he’d thought about their dating life, too.

Those few years had been mostly good, but the bad had been so bitter. 

“What did you mean, then?” Rey asked.

“Our professional relationship,” Zhet said, “we used to trust each other. We used to understand each other. We _believed_ in each other and now…”

“Now we’re bracing for a blow. All the time,” Rey said, nodding.

“Yeah,” Zhet said finally.

“The breakup was the start of it,” Rey began, “and then we just… we let our griping at home enter our work. After that, we split up and then you started going farther and farther for longer and longer. I threw myself into training Gida and Jonas and we just… we never got used to being around each other like adults again.” 

“That sounds about right,” Zhet said, nodding and pursing his lips thoughtfully.

“I miss being your friend,” Rey admitted.

“I miss having you on my side, Master Jedi,” Zhet said, “truce?”

“You want to shoot my husband,” Rey whispered.

“I do,” Zhet said, “but I won’t. Not unless he makes me.”

“Why the sudden change?”

“I trust you. Can you trust me?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“I’ve missed you, Rey.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”


	5. Memory is the Mother of All Wisdom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning at the bottom

**_“Memory is the mother of all wisdom. ”_ ― Aeschylus**

_The entire world seemed to be beautiful and green here. The young man sat on a blanket next to his brother and his father. They were eating food that Father had brought and drinking from containers, but it was comfortable and peaceful._

_The boy watched his brother, this time with a head of dark hair- brown or black? his brain supplied- stand and look around the little meadow that their father had brought them to. It was beautiful here, complete with tall and broad trees for shade and a soft and cool breeze. It ruffled the young man's hair. This was a memory - and an early one, too. Most of his memories were muddled, especially in dreams. It was never something longer than a few seconds, just enough to show him someone and where he knew them from. He'd first met Captain Progra when he was young, and she'd been passing him on the way to a meeting on some transport vessel of some kind. He'd first met Captain Lucius, his brother's handler, at a formal function of another kind._

_There was obviously his father - whom he always knew - and his brother, who he had known his entire life._

_Judging by the size difference between them in memories from his earlier years, he was the younger of the two of them, unless his brother had always been much bigger than him, somehow. Now their heights had fallen to around the same point, but when they were younger, the small differences in their ages had translated to several inches._

_His brother giggled as he led the way up one of the little rolling hills, shaking his bangs out of his face. Father would probably make them get a haircut soon, but not yet. Even though it was technically a uniform violation, he seemed relaxed about haircuts. It was probably out of an effort to let them enjoy the freedom to decide their hair length before they entered the cadet academy or, perhaps, training in The Force._

_**Did they already know we had The Force** the young man thought, even as he felt his young self scramble after his brother._

_Also: who was 'they'? His father and instructors? His mother? Did his father have a wife?_

_So many of his formative memories and basic information was so fuzzy to him. Certain details were crystal clear, but others, like his name, weren't._

_**"Nydo! Akela! Be careful!"** Father cupped his hands around his mouth, calling after them. The young man- well, no, he was a BOY now. He was little- turned and looked over his shoulder at the colossal figure of his father._

_“Akela! C'mon!" Nydo called. His brother - **my brother is Nydo** \- ran up the hill, his slightly longer legs outpacing the boy quickly. The boy's foot caught on something in the grass, and he landed heavily on his front. His forehead smacked the ground. It seemed like a moment later that his father was next to him, crouching down to inspect his face, hands, and knees._

_"Akela, are you okay?"_

_“Yeah,” the boy- **Akela** his mind suddenly supplied. **I’m Akela. That’s me**_

When he woke up, it was almost jarring. 

Akela rubbed his face, then blinked.

His name was Akela. 

_I know my name,_ Akela thought. He rubbed his face again, then glanced around his room. His emotions were all muddled and confused. He didn't think it was too much, at first, but then he jumped when he realized the little door of his room was open. 

Captain Proga loitered by the door, looking at him carefully. She was quiet, as always, but not cold or unfeeling. Akela looked at her intently. She didn't sleep here, he thought, unless it was early in the morning and or fairly late in the night, it didn't make sense for her to be still dressed and in uniform. 

After weeks living and recovering in the facility here, he'd gotten used to her particular brand of stoic care.

"Is my name Akela?" he blurted, running a hand over his face. He'd been kept away from his official paperwork and never talked , only . Captain Proga had been told to let his name come to him on his own.

"Yes," Captain Proga said.

"And my brother is Nydo?"

"That is also correct."

"Has he figured out yet?" Akela asked. 

"About two days ago," Captain Proga said.

"That's why you had us train separately?" the boy- - asked.

"Just for a few days," Captain Proga said, walking over to sit in a chair next to his bed.

"If my memories are coming back, will that mean I'll be able to start training more physically?" Akela asked. He looked up at Captain Proga, who pressed her dark palms together and tapped her foot lightly in thought, "I know that I have a lot to learn again, but I really want to start training in earnest. If I'm supposed to recover enough to join the cadet academy or the Knights of Ren-"

Captain Proga held up a hand, and Akela fell silent. She wasn't a believer in corporal punishment the way Captain Lucius seemed to be. Rather, she had a kind of straightforward authority. Whatever she said happened. If it didn't, then stormtroopers would step in and enforce her will effortlessly. After even as few weeks as he'd had with her complete focus, he could appreciate her efforts, her advice, and her perspective.

"The question is not 'if' you will qualify for one of these positions. The question is which one," Captain Proga said seriously, "you're being given access to such extensive rehabilitation efforts and training because your father had a long career with the First Order before he died, and also because you and your brother were two of our finest recruits at the time of the accident. It is better to try and heal you than to try and replace you. 

"Okay," Akela murmured. He sighed, finally, and settled back on his bed, "I wish I could remember more about him," Ekela admitted guiltily. He knew from his studies that certain parts of the galaxy were far torn or conquered by Coruscant and the efforts of the corrupt Jedi, but some days, he just wanted to be a person. A normal, living, and breathing person without a secondary purpose or fate. 

It was no use speculating about it. Whether or not he was seriously excited about his training was irrelevant. It was what his father had wanted more than anything other. 

Now his father was gone, and this was all he and Nydo had left. 

*****

Gida’smoo braced herself, then took a deep breath. 

Everything was so different nowadays; her master, Luke, had gone quiet in the two weeks since Rey had gotten home,   
Finn was dealing with the fact that everyone thought that Rey was now “in charge” of the Jedi, now that she was back, and Rey was dealing with the fact that people were starting to murmur about her time on Athiktos. 

_Rey Jedi’s been brainwashed by Kylo Ren._

_Rey Jedi let Kylo Ren kidnap her padawan._

_Kylo Ren and Snoke turned Rey Jedi into a traitor years ago. She infiltrated the Resistance as a double-agent and now they’ve got her padawan._

_Zhetam Lylin’s son has been kidnapped by Kylo Ren._

_Kylo Ren is Jonas Quorvin’s father._

Gida’smoo punched the bag extra hard, just to deal with some of her anger. Forcing her anger out through her fist, she felt it shake through her body, so she expelled it through her hand. The bag moved so much that it was knocked off of its apparatus and fell onto the floor heavily. Gida’smoo stepped back, pulling her feet out of the way so it didn’t crush her. 

Her little brother, more or less, was missing. 

Jonas Quorvin was somewhere in the ENTIRE GALAXY and she had NO IDEA how to find him, and people were muttering about his parentage. She couldn’t understand the obsession with gossip, especially since Master Rey was back from the kriffing dead. Gida’smoo absently kicked the punching bag again. 

“Rage has never been a good motivator for you,” Master Rey’s voice said behind her. 

Gida’smoo turned around and saw Master Rey standing in the doorway. She walked into her room, brushing some of her loose dark hair out of her face. Gida’smoo sighed and scuffed her training shoes on the floor, “I just have a lot of feelings right now, Master.” 

“Gida’smoo, you’re a fully-fledged Jedi, you don’t have to call me “Master” anymore,” Master Rey said, 

“I still feel like you are.” Gida’smoo mumbled.

“I understand that, but I just wanted to say, out loud, that we’re equals, especially to me.”

Gida’smoo shrugged noncommittally. She looked up into Master Rey’s face, but then looked away. Her eyes were the same color as Jonas’s. How had she missed the fact that she was his mother? It was so obvious that they were related. 

_You didn’t want to know because then you’d have to recognize that Master Rey really isn’t your mom,_ Gida reminded herself. She turned back to her punching bag, drilling a series of heavy punches. She knew her form was terrible and didn’t care. She just needed an excuse to turn her back on Master Rey.

Pregnant. 

Master Rey Jedi was pregnant. 

By Kylo Ren. 

After three months spent on Athiktos, Master Rey had come back _pregnant_. What in the kriffing hell had happened to her?! Annoyance curled within Gida’smoo as she thought about the time that Master Rey had spent years with no boyfriend or interesting men, as far as she’d ever known. 

Now, after only three months, Master Rey had fallen in love- with Kylo Ren of all people!- and gotten pregnant.

“You’re angry,” Rey said. Her voice was impassive, but just hearing her set her teeth on edge suddenly. She’d missed Rey but she was suddenly . 

Gida’smoo was nineteen standard years old. She’d been mature enough to handle this secret! Jonas had known! All of her masters and even Poe Dameron had known who Jonas Quorvin’s true identity was. 

Gida had gotten her first period with only Master Rey for comfort! Master Rey had helped her when she got bad acne one summer before they realized she was allergic to one of the plants on Yavin 4. When she’d been homesick, Rey had held her. When she’d been tired or hungry or discouraged, it had been Master Rey and Master Luke who had been there.

Now Master Luke was gone. 

It was only Rey. 

And Rey had spent years actively lying to her.

“Gida?” Rey asked, her voice still gentle, but clear. 

Gida'smoo turned on her heel, "why didn't you tell me you were his mother?" 

Master Rey blinked, then sighed. She straightened a little, but met Gida'smoo's gaze without any guilt or hesitation, "I only told the people who absolutely needed to know." 

"And you thought that I didn't?" 

"If I thought you did, I would have told you." 

"How can you say it so... so callously!? I was there with all of you, and everyone else knew, even him!"

"Don't be dramatic. 'Everyone' didn't know."

"Luke knew! Finn _and_ Poe knew! He knew, too. Kriff, I think Zhet even knew!? He didn't seem shocked at all when you told the room in there. How come I'm the only Force sensitive in this whole place that doesn't know that Kylo Ren has a _personal stake_ in Jonas's life?"

"The First Order was focused on both of you. I didn't want to give that kind of burden on anyone who didn't need it. Jonas only knew because I didn't want the secret to be used against him."

"What about me? You didn't care about how I'd feel?"

"I made that choice before I even knew who you were! Finn and Poe knew because they were there when Jonas was born. Zhetam Lylin found out because Ben t-"

"KYLO REN KNEW!?" 

"He figured it out when Jonas was six."

"So what was the point of keeping it secret from everyone- from me? The whole point of the secret didn't even matter, and you didn't tell me! I've walked around- I have been totally clueless this ENTIRE TIME and it didn't even matter!" 

"I did what was best for Jonas and his safety within the Resistance."

"He needed to be kept safe from me? What did you think I would do, especially with a Resistance captain and commander running around, in on the secret. I lived here for my whole life and you knew me and you still decided that I couldn't be trusted?"

"I couldn't trust that no one would betray the secret, Gida. I only ever told Jonas. Everyone else found out some other way, but he deserved to know and-"

"And I didn't? I grew up with him! I lived every day with him! Why didn't I 'need to know' that his entire life was a life? That _my_ entire life was a lie. You said you worried about how he'd feel if he found out some other way, but did you ever think how anyone else might feel finding out that way?"

"Do not lecture me about 'did I ever think how anyone else might feel'! I have spent hours agonizing over every choice and I was never happy, but I had to do something, so you'll have to forgive me if you think I might make the wrong call, but I did what I thought was best!"

"Oh, I know you did, but you chose wrong."

"Well, you and Jonas are both alive, so maybe you can shut your mouth and maybe say 'thank you' for giving up the man I loved to protect you and the rest of the Galaxy. And then I gave up the chance to raise my son in order to protect him. Then I decided to look after you!"

"Why didn't you just say I was a burden sooner, huh!?" Gida'smoo snarled, stepping forward. She took a shuddering breath, unable to get her throat to clear. 

"You're not a burden, Gida, but I never expected to be anyone's master, and then I met you. You were the best padawan I could ask for, but I wasn't prepared to have another child suddenly in my life. I didn't have a chance to decide when to tell you and how." 

"You were my mom! You were really my mom my whole life. I was with you and Luke every day, unless I was spending a few days on Ryloth with my parents. I had another mother out there - but you were who was there when I first met boys and when I skinned my knees and when I had nightmares, and I wasn't really yours, but it was always okay because I could look at Jonas and say, "it's okay because he's adopted, too, so I can belong. Now it turns out that he was yours all along!" 

"Gida, just because he was mine biologically doesn't mean that I didn't love you!"

"But you didn't love me the and I thought you _did_. You were my mother, and it was okay because you adopted Jonas, too, so you could love us both the same - but it turns out that you made us both call you master but you- you were always putting him before me and you had- you had a kid already and you didn't need another one, and now you're pregnant and- an- and you can have the baby girl you always want or whatever!" 

"Gida'smoo," Rey suddenly stepped forward, touching her arms carefully. 

"Everything I knew was a lie and it hurts so much," Gida'smoo said, closing her eyes. 

Rey's hands gently moved to cup Gida'smoo's face. Gida'smoo finally opened her amber eyes. When she did, she saw that Rey was crying silently. 

"You have been my daughter for a long time, Gida," Rey said finally. Her chin tightened, taking a shaky breath before she continued, "if I have another girl, she won't replace you. You were the first child I could just enjoy without fearing discovery. I didn't think about you and Jonas the same way, no, but that's because I had to share you with your parents. I couldn't just call you mine. I didn't have to wonder if you'd suddenly look like the greatest enemy the Resistance has had." 

Rey's face suddenly twisted and she clenched her eyes for a second, before she said, "I never looked at you and felt sad." 

Gida'smoo's mouth fell open, but she said nothing. She wiped her nose with one hand, watching Rey's face.

"There were so many times that I looked at Jonas and I saw his father. I saw what I lost, but with you, you were just my Gida."

"Rey..."

Rey stepped forward and hugged Gida'smoo tightly, "I have always thought of you and loved you as mine. I'm sorry I didn't tell you, and I'm sorry that I hurt you." 

Gida’smoo leaned against Master Rey, closing her eyes tightly. She was still so confused and so hurt, but she was struck with one blinding and all-encompassing thought.

_Kriff, I have missed your hugs._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several mentions of pregnancy in the Gida'smoo portion


	6. Women Instinctually Know How to Nourish Each Other, and Just Being With Each Other is Restorative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! A wild update appears! 
> 
> Special thanks to MyJediLife for her wonderful work as a beta

_**"Women instinctually know how to nourish each other, and just being with each other is restorative."** _ **\- Tanja Taalijard**

Rey rolled onto her side, groaning and pulling her blankets up higher over her head. The morning sickness with _this_ baby didn’t make her really and truly sick. Instead, she just had to lay still, sip water, and ride it out.

 _This sucks,_ Rey thought dully.

This door opened with a soft noise and Rey’s stomach turned over. 

Yesterday, Poe had been kind enough to gather up a plate of what he considered to be healthy, hearty, and nutritious food. There had been two different kinds of greasy and protein-rich meat, which was the best the Resistance Mess Hall had to offer, but as soon as Poe had reached the edge of Rey’s bed, the smell had smacked her full in the face.

Three months of eating flavorless nutribars or salty breads and canned rations had left her with a wildly reduced palette.

Luckily, Poe had lifted the plate out of her way as she threw herself off the bed and into the refresher and empty her stomach. Mollified, he’d settled with having BB8 deliver her a nutribar. 

Apparently, he’d thought to try again. 

“Poe, thank you, but please don’t,” Rey said immediately. She winced, curling her arms around her head and bracing for the smell of whatever was being served. 

The Force signature near her door waited patiently. Rey brushed against the mind out of habit, hoping she hadn’t disappointed Poe too much, but instead of the impulsive and energetic vector that was Poe’s mind, she found something collected and compartmentalized. 

_Hang on_ Rey thought suddenly. 

That was Todra’s force signature.

“I thought some crackers and a simple nutribar would be better today,” Todra said, finally stepping into the room. Rey threw her arm out, sitting up and shoving her blankets aside. 

“You’re a kriffing lifesaver,” Rey said without preamble. 

Todra laughed. She sat on the bed next to Rey, passing her a sleeve of some kind of mild salted cracker. Rey opened it and sniffed warily at the opening. 

No nausea. 

Without any further hesitation, Rey began to pull crackers free in pairs, nibbling eagerly. She had forgotten how hungry she was when she was pregnant, even with the queasiness that her Little Flicker had given her. 

“Better?” Todra asked, smiling. She pulled absently at one sleeve, even as her impossibly white smile faded. Rey nodded, but her friend continued cautiously, “How are you, besides the morning sickness?”

Rey shoved two more crackers into her mouth, looking away. Her gaze fell, unfocused, on one of Todra’s boots, hanging off the side of the bed. In the seven days since her argument with Gida’smoo in the training hall, things between the two of them had settled into a still-uncomfortable place, but they were at least at peace. Rey knew, even though she wanted Gida’smoo to just be happy for her- or be happy _with_ her- that it would take a lot of adjustment for someone her age to reconcile so much change and so many new truths. 

_You spent so much time trying to protect Jonas from his family that you forgot to protect Gida’smoo from Jonas’s family,_ Rey thought. She’d had that debate with herself somewhere around three hundred times over the past week, but she knew it was no good. It had been a mistake to leave Gida’smoo in the dark so long. Pure and simple. 

She’d tried to justify her and Luke’s decisions, even to herself, but all of her excuses felt hollow. Truly, she’d just enjoyed having someone who didn’t look at her differently because of who Jonas was. She’d loved having two almost-children, rather than having a should-be child and an almost-child who would always look at Jonas and feel inadequate. 

On top of Gida’smoo’s new distance, a month of scouting across the galaxy had produced no leads on Jonas and Ben. From what everyone could tell, they hadn’t been picked up by the First Order, but their ship hadn’t been spotted since it jumped into hyperspace off the surface of Athiktos. They couldn’t very well post them all over the Holonet, however, which didn’t make the search easy, but it had still been enough time that they would have expected to find _something_. 

Rey hadn’t announced her pregnancy publically yet, so their searches were very limited. If Zhet started tearing apart multiple planets looking for Jonas, then people would know that Jonas was missing, whether kidnapped or run away, and that would just lead to bounties and competition with bounty hunters. 

Bounty hunters who might decide to sell Jonas to the First Order for a higher payday. 

“I don’t know where Ben and Jonas are. It’s starting to weigh on me,” Rey said, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. She spun one of the crackers between her fingers. She was certain they were alive, even if neither of them had made contact. They had to be. 

The ship that they’d taken into hyperspace wasn’t particularly sturdy and even a month of searching hadn’t produced results, but they to be alive. She’d worked on that ship, had declared it safe. If it had fallen apart in hyperspace, casting them into an infinite number of places and pieces, she’d never find them, for one, but she’d also never recover. 

“Can’t you look for them? In the Force?”

“I haven’t tried. If I did…” Rey trailed off again. If she did, Finn might be able to use her link with Ben or Jonas to track them down or, worse, she might attract the attention of someone like Snoke. Rey rubbed the place between her eyes, sighing. “I don’t even know what to do.” 

Todra’s hand on her arm was warm and welcome. Rey put another cracker in her mouth and put her now-empty hand over Todra’s. She loved Finn and Poe and Gida’smoo, but she needed a wife and a mother, at least at this particular second. Todra squeezed her arm, murmuring, “They’re out there.”

Rey pursed her lips, blinking rapidly to clear tears that she hadn’t expected, “I had a dream, not last night, but the night before last that their ship broke apart in hyperspace. I don’t… I hadn’t thought of it before, but now I’m TERRIFIED that I’ll look for them and there will be nothing to find”

“Oh, Rey”

“It’s the not knowing that feels worse than anything else. I’ve sat and waited for years before, for my parents, but this is something else.” Rey sniffed, wiping blindly at her eyes and nose until Todra produced a floral handkerchief from somewhere. Rey looked down at the fabric for a split second and smiled to herself. It was obviously one that Todra had stolen from Obran or someone in his crew, but there was something supremely comforting about the tiny flowers spaced evenly over the pastel pink background. 

It meant Obran and the Resistance base and Poe and Todra and Finn and Gida and everyone else she loved. 

“This is something else,” Rey repeated, rubbing at her eyes. 

“Kids always are.”

“What am I supposed to do if the ship _I_ repaired killed them?”

Silence hung in the air for either two seconds or seventeen years before Todra whispered, “I don’t know, but I would trust you. I’ve seen you work and I’ve seen you with the Falcon. If I had to fly in something you had built, I wouldn’t worry.”

Rey nodded, but it felt shallow and stiff. She knew her own work and she trusted that ship. She would have gotten on it herself, but she could only repair things that she knew about. If there had been a malfunction she hadn’t seen on the ground, then they still could have been flying a deathtrap. 

“How could I face the others if I killed them? How could I face this new baby? How could I face _myself_?” She took a deep breath, sitting up straight and finally getting her tears to stop. 

Todra chewed on the inside of her cheek. She looked from Rey’s face and down to their joined hands, one pale, but tanned, and the other a warm brown. Rey could practically hear her mind whirring away, turning the problem over and over and over. 

Information and suggestions were probably flying from deep memory to the front of her friend’s head, being applied to the problem, considered, or tossed aside as she thought. Todra’s mind was one of the most fascinating that Rey had ever seen inside and after knowing her for almost fifteen years, she’d learned it almost as well as Finn’s or Luke’s or her own. 

“You’ll have to,” Todra said finally. She looked up from Rey’s hand, liquidy brown eyes digging into her again, “You’ll have to. That sounds , but we’re at war. People die. We buried R2D2. We said goodbye to you and Jonas and Luke and so many others. This war won’t stop until it’s over. We can’t stop until it’s over.” 

“All I want to do is look under every rock on every planet between here and Athiktos, looking for them,” Rey said, pressing her forehead to her palm, “when I remind myself that I can’t do that, all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry. What am I- where do I start?”

“Snoke is still out there,” Todra said.

Rey stared at her.

“That’s where you start and where you end, Rey. Pure and simple. Snoke is still out there. We have three fully-trained Force Users aligned with the Light. Even if I was going to be generous and add Ben and Jonas, that would put us at five. We don’t even know where two of those five are. Snoke is powerful on his own, but he has more than twenty knights of Ren. They’re scattered throughout the galaxy, sure, but they’re also growing in number and have been for years.”

“Every time one dies, it feels like another two replace them,” Rey said, nodding and thinking.

“Gida’smoo was shown some kind of map to other Force users. I don’t know if she told you, but that was how we found you. Your Resistance beacon had been going off, but so many of those Rebellion-era alerts get triggered by animals that we thought it was nothing. When you reached out to Saani and Gida got a dream from Luke, we knew where to go.”

“How many Force Users?” Rey asked.

“A lot,” Todra said. She brushed a hand over the smooth top of her hair. She was absolutely gorgeous, to the point where it was annoying. Even after more than ten years, four children, a war, and access to only whatever the Resistance could provide by way of toiletries, her brown skin was still clear and unwrinkled and her black hair was shiny, falling in soft waves even when pulled back.

Meanwhile, Rey looked like a half-drowned rat most of the time and a grubby cat the rest of it. 

“That’s where we start, Rey,” Todra said, “we find those people and bring them into the war. Including my children. I don’t like it, but we have to do it. We have to even the odds, one way or another, or we’ll never win. If we don’t add more pieces to the board, I’m scared that Saani will be fighting until she’s my age.” 

Rey nodded, “You’re right.”

“I know it’s hard, but we have to keep going. We have to stick together.”

Rey swallowed, “How did you survive the past few months? How- I mean, what our disappearance must have felt like from here… ”

“It was horrible. Finn and Poe weren’t getting along so well. He was constantly gone, taking stormtroopers out. It was like the Knights of Ren were tearing the entire galaxy apart.” Todra squeezed Rey’s hands tightly in her own, probably trying to remind herself that this was real. Rey really was safe and home. 

“ I bet they were looking for us.”

Todra snorted, “It wouldn’t shock me at all. If they’d had you and Jonas, you would have been the ultimate bargaining chip” 

“And we had one of the most powerfully dark artifacts I’ve come across”

“Was it really that bad?”

Rey nodded, “When Tomax Ren first handled it, it caused a ripple across the galaxy that we felt on Coruscant. That thing was on Ladiri and I could feel it into the Force on Coruscant ”

Todra let go of Rey’s hands, shifting on the bed and staring at Rey intently. Rey could almost laugh and the new creases that had appeared on Todra’s face as she leaned forward on one elbow to look intently at Rey. Ever the analyst, apparently, “Oh kriff. And Jonas just… fixed it?”

“Yeah. I’m surprised he didn’t bring the entire galaxy down around us while he did it. It didn’t create these big ripples, but the half-restrained _power_ I felt? It was staggering.”

Todra tapped her chin with one finger thoughtfully, “Maybe that was on purpose.” 

“What?”

“Maybe the first time, the lightsaber wanted to make a lot of noise in order to be found, but this time around, it didn’t.”

Rey chewed on another cracker while she thought. “Maybe, but what would be the point?” 

Todra stole one of Rey’s crackers, then waved it in the air thoughtfully, “how smart do you think this thing is?”

“Now? I don’t think it’s different from any other lightsaber. I’ve held it and tried to poke around it and it feels normal now, but when we first got it on Ladiri, you could feel there was something inside of it. It was buried, but it was there. I thought it was just the imprint from its past usage or from when it was made, but it turns out a piece of Emperor Palpatine had attached itself to it.”

Todra choked on her cracker, “A- what? That’s not possible.” 

“Todra, you’re married to someone who can move objects with his mind. I think the Emperor was trying to do something in the dark side, maybe trying to possess a person close to him, but everyone was running away, so he grabbed something that was open to the Force: a kyber crystal.” 

Todra swallowed dryly, then cleared her throat, “That makes sense. And Jonas fought him?”

“Yeah, however much of him was there. I think- it wasn’t like only part of his personality was there. It’s more like his consciousness was hiding within the kyber crystal, building up power. He was nowhere near what he would have been like if he’d had a real body or something to connect with besides a _cave _in the middle of nowhere that only had a handful of corpses in it.”__

__“Do you think he’s gone for good?” Todra asked hesitantly. “Do you think Jonas could possibly pull that off alone?”_ _

__Rey set her crackers down on the bedside table and looked at her friend, “Todra, I saw Jonas do things I couldn’t believe.”_ _

__“What kind of things?” Todra asked._ _

__Rey took a deep breath: “I have to tell someone, but you have to promise me, one mother to another, not to say anything to Finn or Poe or Akuryate or anyone. Not yet.”_ _

__“I promise, Rey,” Todra said, eyebrows furrowed, “but what about this lightsaber is so… whatever that you can’t tell Poe and Finn?”_ _

__“It’s not just the lightsaber. It’s the things I saw Jonas _do_. The powers he has. Let me just start at the beginning. So, after we found a ship and began repairs…”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> QUESTION OF THE UPDATE: (will also be available on Twitter)
> 
> What's a setting you want to see during this story?


	7. Maybe the Only Significant Difference Between a Really Smart Simulation and a Human Being Was the Noise They Made When You Punched Them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of issues with emails and stuff, so please pop over to Twitter, if you can, and follow me there or on Tumblr. This way you can definitely get updates when things happen! 
> 
> These are also places where you can get updates:  
> [ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/smallenoughtofit)  
> [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/smallenoughtofit)  
> [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/smallenoughtofit)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/smallenoughtof1)

**“Maybe the only significant difference between a really smart simulation and a human being was the noise they made when you punched them.” - Terry Pratchett, _The Long Earth_**

After Rey had finished, Todra sat on the bed, her mouth hanging open. She blinked slowly, not speaking, until Rey finally murmured, “Todra?”

“He’s got those kinds of abilities and we don’t know where he is,” Todra mumbled.

“Yeah,” Rey said, nodding. She rubbed her forehead, closing her eyes tightly for a moment.

“I love Jonas and I know he’s a good kid, but having this kind of stress put on you so young… he’s lost a father figure, gained another, been shipwrecked and left in isolation for months, lost you, had to choose between his father and another father-figure and he’s who-knows-where, carrying around a kyber crystal that used to hold a tiny piece of the Emperor,” Todra shook her head, one hand flying to the top of her head as she stared off into the middle distance. Rey could practically see her mind working. She knew that, if she prodded at Todra’s mind, she’d been greeted by that organized and compartmentalized library, likely in disarray. Little blocks of information would be moved and rearranged, added to when necessary, and tethers of thought and connection would tie these blocks together across their shelves and places.

“I know it’s a lot,” Rey said, “it’s why I didn’t want to tell the others. If they think Jonas is as powerful as he is, then they might be more concerned with capturing him than finding him.”

“They may not get that choice,” Todra said. Her face was blank as she spoke, but Rey saw the flicker of emotion, deep in her dark eyes, that was smothered by her more analytical side, “if he makes then choose between him and his father…”

“I know,” Rey said. Her mouth twisted and she gritted her teeth, trying to hold back sobs. The thought of anything happening to Jonas or Ben terrified her.

Todra surged forward and hugged Rey tightly, “It’ll be okay. I have faith in Jonas and you.”

Rey nodded. She took slow deep breaths, trying to recollect herself as best as possible. The last thing she needed to do was cry herself into exhaustion.

Her door chimed as someone asked for entry.

“Come in!” Rey called. She waved one hand, releasing the locking mechanism that held the door closed. The door slid open, revealing Poe who was, thank the Force, not trying to feed her today.

“Oh, good,” Poe said, smiling, “you did get to eat.”

“I did,” Rey said, “thank you for trying yesterday, but I think crackers is going to be my staple of choice for a while.”

“Fine by me,” Poe said, raising his hands, “as long as you and the baby are eating and doing fine, I’m happy.” Rey grinned, leaning back on her hands. She turned and reached for the sleeve of crackers, offering one to Poe, “c’mon and join us, Poe. It’ll be like a night out on the town, except we’re all old and married.”

“I wish I could,” Poe said, nervously smacking one palm with the back of his hand, “but I actually came to get you.”

“Is everything okay?” Rey asked, sitting up straight and frowning. Had something happened? Was the Third Republic demanding her presence before the Senate already? Had someone put a bounty out on Jonas and Ben?

“It’s BB,” Poe said, shrugging, “she… Obran and I have been trying to explain everything to her and she’s not taking it well.”

“What does ‘not well’ mean?” Todra asked, turning around on the bed to stare at Poe. She spent most of her time working with research, programming larger interfaces, and computers, so she didn’t have quite as much experience with droids as a mechanic would, but she knew BB8 and loved her.

“She’s agitated, for the most part,” Poe said, “she’ll kind of, well, freak out here and there, either berating herself for not finding you and Jonas or she’ll suddenly demand that we leave right now and go look for him. When I try to explain why we can’t, she gets very agitated. She’s also very worried about everyone, especially Rey, and keeps wanting to come see you at all hours. I think she just wants to make sure you’re still here.”

“Oh BB…” Rey whispered.

“I thought she’d settle down after a few days, but she’s not and it’s been weeks,” Poe admitted, “and with everything going on, Obran and I can’t look out of her and provide that reassurance all day long whenever she needs it.”

“You want me to talk to her?” Rey asked.

“Yeah, just to see if that would help.”

“Of course I would,” Rey said. She stood up, brushing a few cracker crumbs from her sleep clothing, “let me change and we’ll head right over there.’

“Are you sure that you don’t need more food before then?” Poe asked warily.

“No, I think I’m alright,” Rey said, smiling to herself, “Breakfast #2 can wait a little longer.”

“Speaking of breakfast, I’m going to go back and make sure all of my little ones actually ate theirs,” Todra said, standing as well. She put a hand on Rey’s arm, squeezing encouragingly.

“Keep me updated!” Todra said. Her voice was casual, but her eyes weren’t on Poe’s back. Instead, they drilled into Rey. She knew what that meant.

“Thank you for doing this,” Poe said, leaning the way back to his and Obran’s quarters.

“Don’t thank me. BB is my friend, just like you and Obran are.”

“She’s just been so… off… these past few weeks. I sincerely doubt that it’s an age thing, even if she is getting up there, so I thought talking to you might help her.”

“No worries,” Rey soothed, “you’re my friend. I’d do anything for any of you.”

Poe nodded. He walked alongside her. Rey turned to look at his face and her heart fell. The circles under his eyes were so deep-set they’d settled into a purple-brownish color. His hair was still in the same black curls as before, but they were streaked with gray in earnest now. He looked tired. When Rey brushed against his mind, she could feel this bone-deep exhaustion, something that radiated from the marrow of his bones and into the rest of his body.

“Hang on,” Rey said suddenly.

“What?” Poe asked, seeming to start out of a reverie as they walked.

“Hold still,” Rey faced Poe. She could see the absolute back-breaking effort it took him to keep his exhaustion and stress from showing. Apparently twenty years of friendship made it difficult for him to maintain that facade around her, try as he might.

“What?” Poe glanced from Rey’s hand to her face and back.

“I’m going to try and help you with the exhaustion,” Rey said.

“Rey, you don’t-”

“I know some of this is due to grief you felt over me. Turns out I’m alive and you’ve worn yourself thin for no reason. It’s the least I can do,” Rey said flatly, “just hold still. All you have to do is close your eyes and breathe in.”

Poe pursed his lips, then shrugged. After so many years, he’d apparently learned when Rey wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer. He closed his eyes, straightening his shoulders, then let Rey put her right palm to his face.

Rey put out tendrils of the Force into Poe’s face, looking for something that she could actually heal. There was inflammation around his brain, likely from stress. Carefully, Rey brushed her consciousness against the muscles of his face and along his skull, gently pressing along them to reduce the inflammation where she could. Poe sighed deeply as Rey got the muscles around his temples and jaw to relax.

Rey repeated the same process in his neck, between his shoulder blades, and deep in the muscles of his shoulders and chest. She couldn’t wince and keep her tether with the Force as deep and secure as she wanted, but sensing the level of pain and inflammation in Poe’s body made her want to hug him.

Finally, after she eased the tension in his upper body as much as she thought she could, she turned her attention to cells in his muscles and around his heart, lungs, and brain. Where she could, she used the Force to patch overstressed places in his muscles, strengthened any capillaries that she could sense were weak, and nudged a few cells here and there to begin their repair cycle a little faster than they would otherwise. When she retreated, Poe swayed a little in place.

“How do you feel?” Rey murmured.

Poe sighed, “I feel so much better, but I also want to take a nap,” he chuckled.

Rey smiled as Poe’s eyes opened, “okay, now let’s go.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Poe said, nodding. He walked much slower now, but he seemed to be actually standing straight now. Rey followed him, chewing the inside of her cheek thoughtfully as they walked.

“You know, I should do that more often,” Rey said, looking at Poe’s profile and immediately seeing the benefits that such a change in tension had.

“Wouldn’t that wear you out?” Poe asked, “Force healing takes a lot of effort, doesn’t it?”

“Not what I just did,” Rey said, shaking her head, “All I did was basically tell a bunch of your tissues and cells to become less inflamed, which they did, and then I told some of your muscles that were tense due to stress that they needed to relax. From there, I did some minor cell repair to your capillaries that had weakened and prompted cell repair, but all of that is easy, really.”

“It doesn’t sound easy,” Poe said, his eyebrows furrowing as he looked sideways at her.

“Well, it is. I’m not having to use the Force to anything. I’m only using it to your body to do something or to encourage a process that’s already on the ticket. I’m not having to create tissues or organs. I’m just sort of nudging your body to do what it already does normally,” Rey waved a hand, “honestly, I should get Saani to do it, too. It’s a great way to learn how to Force heal in general.”

“You want me to let a six-year-old poke around in my internal organs and brain?” Poe asked, stopping suddenly and staring at her.

“No!” Rey said, blowing air through her teeth dismissively, “I want you to let a six-year-old use the Force on the muscles of your arms and shoulders, while supervised, so she can have an easier time controlling the body later on when the stakes are higher.”  
Poe groaned, low in his chest, and exhaled, “I’ll think about it,” he mumbled weakly.

 _That means ‘yes’,_ Rey thought, withholding a smile. She followed Poe around the last corner to his and Obran’s apartment where BB-8 waited. Inside there was only a tiny seating room and a bedroom with BB-8’s power station propped in a corner of the bedroom.

Thoughts of Force healing immediately vanished as Rey saw the agitated way BB was rolling in place, sometimes pausing on top of her power station like she might refuel, other times rolling to the side of the bed that she assumed was Poe’s, judging by the tan pilot’s boots placed on the floor near the headboard. BB rolled back around the end of the bed as the door opened, letting out a pleasant series of chirps and beeps in greeting, **“Greetings, Designation [MASTER FRIEND POE],”** BB said, rolling first to let Poe place his palm on top of her head for a moment before she turned her attention to Rey.

“Hey BB,” Rey said, settling down on the floor at the end of Poe and Obran’s immaculately made bed.

BB-8 rolled back and forth in place anxiously until her camera finally turned to face Rey, **“Greetings, Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY].”**

“How are you?” Rey asked quietly. She didn’t glance up as Poe backed out of the bedroom and into the sitting room. Distantly, she heard Poe rummaging through something outside, but didn’t bother to look up.

BB’s camera settled on something over Rey’s shoulder for a moment, then focused back on her face, **“Designation: [BB-8-SELF] is process [REEVALUATE] the status of [FILES: ALL FILES] due to task [REASSIGNMENT: STATUS [ACTIVE]] of Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY], but prognosis [DIFFICULT] and estimated time until task[REEVALUATION: STATUS[COMPLETE]] is [CURRENTLY UNKNOWN]. This is description [UNDESIRABLE] and prognosis [DIFFICULT]. Process [SORT FILES [ALL FILES]] is only on attempt [CURRENT ATTEMPT 1].”**

“That sounds like a lot,” Rey said softly, “what if instead of trying to do everything, you just pick one thing and tell me about it?”

BB-8 twisted slightly for a moment, her head swiveling as she considered the likelihood of that attempt succeeding, then said, **“Designation [BB-8-SELF] is process [FEEL: OPTION [HAPPINESS]] that Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] is status [ALIVE] and location [RESISTANCE BASE 713-998]. Designation [BB-8-SELF] is [FEEL:OPTION[RELIEF]] that Designation[TINY-SQUISHY HUMAN] is status [ALIVE]. However, Designation [BB-8-SELF] process [FEEL: OPTION[OPTION UNSELECTED]].”**

“That’s okay,” Rey said, “there are a lot of emotions for you to process.”

**“Designation [MASTER FRIEND POE], Designation [BB-8-SELF] and Squadron [RECOVERY SQUADRON] process [SEARCH] location [PLANET- LADIRI] for time [6 DAYS] and mission [FIND LUKE, REY, AND JONAS] result [FAIL]. Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] and Designation [TINY SQUISHY HUMAN] were location [!LADIRI] and Designation [BB-8-SELF] was status [UNAWARE].”**

“You couldn’t have known we weren’t there,” Rey said, leaning forward to look intently into BB-8’s camera.  
 **“Set [DAMERON FAMILY] was status [INCOMPLETE] and was human process [GRIEVE], but Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] and designation [TINY SQUISHY HUMAN] were status [ALIVE]. Set [DAMERON FAMILY] was human process [GRIEVE] description [UNNECESSARY] because BB-8 was status [IGNORANT].”**

“BB,” Rey said, gently running one finger along the edge of BB-8’s main camera, “you’re not even a medical droid or a death industry droid or even a recovery droid. This isn’t what you were made to do.”

 **“If Designation [R2D2-SKYWALKER-STATUS DECEASED] were status [ALIVE] and location [LADIRI], then mission [FIND LUKE, REY, AND JONAS] would have been result [SUCCESS],”** BB-8 hummed quietly.

Rey sat back and rolled her eyes, “R2-D2 was a very special droid with more programming and a fuller memory bank that I’ve seen outside of any droid that wasn’t part of an analysis program.”

BB-8 trilled in amazement, turning to focus on her again, **“Query [CONFIRM STATEMENT-PREVIOUS STATEMENT]?”**

“Yes. And he probably couldn’t have found out where we were even if he was there. I’ve come across a lot of droids and crash sites, but you’ve done so much, even considering what you were designed to be. Be happy with what you were able to do.”

**“Process[FEEL:OPTION[HAPPY]] is prognosis [POSSIBLE]?” BB-8 asked, “Designation[TINY SQUISHY HUMAN] is location[LOCATION UNKNOWN] and status [IN CUSTODY] of Designation [FIRST ORDER OPERATIVE-KYLO REN].”**

“Kylo Ren isn’t the same person he was a few months ago. He’s not with the First Order anymore,” Rey soothed, “he’s not a danger to Jonas.”

**“Designation [BB-8-SELF] process [EVALUATE-STATEMENT [PREVIOUS STATEMENT]] result [ACCURACY-UNLIKELY]. Designation[FIRST ORDER OPERATIVE-KYLO REN] threat level [EXTREME].”**

“He’s also Jonas’s father.”

BB-8 let out a high whine for a second, her camera focusing on Rey’s face for a moment, then zooming out, as if trying to find some other source of whatever Rey had just said.

**“Information [STATEMENT-PREVIOUS STATEMENT] is description [ACCURATE-NOT ACCURATE]... human process[BIRTH] requires human process[GESTATION] and Designation[TINY SQUISHY HUMAN] relation [GESTATION CARRIER] is Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] for Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] to human process[GESTATION] then Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] must undergo human process [COPULATION] with Designation[FIRST ORDER OPERATIVE-KYLO REN] in order for… Request [PLEASE STAND BY]. Undergoing process [EVALUATE-REEVALUATE[FILES-ALL FILES] CURRENT QUERY-LIKELIHOOD THAT DESIGNATION[FIRST ORDER OPERATIVE-KYLO REN] IS DESIGNATION [TINY SQUISHY HUMAN] RELATION [GESTATION NON-CARRIER]”**

“BB?” Rey asked slowly.

**“Request [PLEASE STAND BY].” BB8 squeaked.**

“Oh, BB…” Rey pressed her lips together, feeling a mixture of guilt and amusement at the absolute stillness of the little droid as she tried to process this new and deeply troubling information. Her tiny red operation light was still on, but a second light, green and slightly closer to the edge of her primary lense, had turned on.

“I’m right here,” Rey promised. She leaned her back against the bed and watched BB-8. They sat in silence, with only the low whirring of BB’s inner drives breaking the quiet. Even Poe was silent outside. Rey wondered if he’d left.

 _Has he had this conversation with BB already? Is that what he meant by, “not processing it well”?_ Rey thought. She took a deep breath, one hand resting on her forehead. Who would have thought that returning from the dead would have negative consequences on her friends?

Finally, BB-8 let out a low whistle and lifted her head slightly. Rey waited patiently as the green light flickered out on BB’s primary display.

****“Is Mission [FIND JONAS] Priority Level [TOP PRIORITY] for Designation[Jedi Friend Rey]?”** BB-8 asked.**

Rey blinked, but only nodded.

****“Query [ESTIMATED TIME UNTIL- DEPARTURE]?”** **

“Departure?”

****“Departure [TIME: TIME UNKNOWN] in order to process [SEARCH] for Designation [TINY SQUISHY HUMAN]. Designation [BB-8-SELF] will process [TRAVEL] and process [SEARCH] for Designation [TINY SQUISHY HUMAN] and Designation [KYLO REN- AFFILIATION UNKNOWN].”** **

Rey nodded. She leaned forward slightly, pressing her palms together and letting her lips rest against the sides of her fingers as she thought.

_I can’t go and search for them right away_

_But I’ll absolutely crush BB if I say I’m not going right now. And, if something happens and BB is off with Poe… she’ll lose her mind with worry_

Rey sat up straight and looked down at the little droid, settling for the truth, “I’m going to find Jonas, I promise. And I want you with me until I can do that full time. In the meantime, I have to deal with being pregnant with a new baby.”

**BB-8 let out another high whine, but didn’t shut down again, **“Query [DESIGNATION [JEDI FRIEND REY] IS RELATION [GESTATION CARRIER] TO DESIGNATION [UNDETERMINED DESIGNATION]?”** **

“Yeah,” Rey said. She braced herself for another meltdown, but instead, BB-8 just let out a series of overjoyed whistles and clicks, her white display light flashing intensely. Rey giggled, leaning forward to hug the droid, “thank you BB.”

****“Designation[JEDI FRIEND REY] is description [WELCOME] to process [ASSISTANCE] until time [TERMINATION OF DESIGNATION[BB-8-SELF]]. Designation[JEDI FRIEND REY] is part of set[DAMERON FAMILY] for term [PERPETUITY].”****


	8. Memory Dilutes, but the Object Remains Unaltered

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/186083488@N06/49971699441/in/dateposted-public/)

**“Memory dilutes, but the object remains unaltered.”― Aanchal Malhotra, _Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory_**

Akela grunted, driving the training weapon down over his head with a broad stroke. Tirza Ren immediately met the swing without any hesitation, but Akela could sense the tension in her shoulder. It hadn’t been easy for her to meet him stroke-for-stroke for two entire minutes. Instead of trying to swing wide again, he angled his blade slightly, pulling the pressure of one half of her weapon before the other. Dropping to one knee as he spun, he slammed his weapon hard into her left leg right above the knee. 

In a real fight, he wouldn’t have taken the precaution. But he didn’t want to permanently injure one of his instructors. If he had to wait weeks while her knee was healed, he’d be stuck reading old reports and trying to build up his cognitive ability, and he didn’t feel like sitting through that again.

Tirzah Ren grunted, but stepped back, dropping her faux blade from her hand and raising them by her head. 

Captain Proga knocked on the wall, calling Akela’s attention to her. As always, she watched him through a clear window that opened into a viewing room of some kind. Depending on the day, his reading instructor, a physical therapist, a knight of Ren, or any one of a dozen other officers might be waiting in there, all watching him as he went through his physical training. It had felt awkward, being inspected by so many people whose names he wasn’t always told, but now he understood the purpose a little better. These were all experts in strategy or high-ranking members overseeing either the Officer’s School, the Stormtrooper Corps, or the Knights of Ren. They were evaluating both him and his brother. Apparently, they had been highly valuable candidates before the Attack, and now, as they recovered, all of the First Order seemed interested in their futures. 

Captain Proga waved him over with a nod. Akela stood, bowed slightly to Tirza Ren, and walked over calmly. He held his training staff by his side, but tried not to display any nervousness. There were two knights of Ren that he didn’t recognize in the room. He wondered if they usually watched his brother, or if they were just returned from a mission. Perhaps they were high ranking knights who had only just decided to visit him. 

Part of Akela selfishly hoped that they weren’t about to dismiss him for the sole purpose of summoning Nydo. He loved his brother, but Nydo’s superior prowess at single combat meant that he was sometimes set off to one side while his brother was showcased. Nydo was proof of the investment in both boys' recovery, so he received more attention and preference. Akela understood that, at least intellectually. 

When the Attack had killed his father and nearly destroyed both him and his brother, it had been a considerable investment to pay for their recovery. It made sense that they would focus on the brother that was the greatest return on that investment, but part of Akela still chafed under the unequal treatment. The only person who seemed more focused on him than Nydo was Captain Progra. She was his handler, and he was her primary concern, which was somewhat encouraging to have. 

“Akela, you and Nydo will be doing something different today after this session,” Captain Proga said into the small microphone in front of her. It fed into a speaker over the window, but Akela wondered if she turned it off, would he still be able to hear her. The transparisteel wasn’t very thick, from what he could tell. 

“Yes, Captain Proga,” Akela said, nodding. He glanced at the other side of the small room at the two knights of Ren, who were unknown to him. He almost reached out to explore their minds, if only to pluck their names from the surface of their thoughts, but thought better of it. While it would be a simple and very timely testimony of his abilities, it would also be a poor first impression. From what he could tell, the invasion of another’s mind was highly disrespectful, even among the knights of Ren. 

“You will go change and then wait for me. You and your brother will be working with the Knights of Ren, at least for a time, this afternoon,” Captain Proga said. Her dark eyes seemed to drill through the glass, cutting into Akela’s mind, even though she didn’t have the Force at all, as far as he could tell. “You are dismissed.”

“Thank you, captain,” Akela said, bowing slightly and turning to walk away. 

Tirzah Ren watched him walk out the door, her dark yellow eyes focused on the side of his head as she paused, her helmet under her arm and balanced on her hip. Akela said nothing, even as he felt something glance off the surface of his mind.  
Was that Tirzah Ren trying to tell him something? Or the two knights from the training room trying to peek into his thoughts? Or perhaps it was his brother, bored again after a mathematics lesson and trying to find him. 

At first, their minds had been entirely their own, but other times both Akela and Nydo had discovered the ability to peer into each other’s thoughts. It was easier to connect for them, even when they were all the way across the base from each other. In their classes on the Force, they were asked to lift stones, shape metal, and deflect stun bolts, but the absolute easiest thing was to open his mind to his brother and to sort through his brother’s thoughts in return.

As soon as he walked through the door, he could sense his brother’s questioning touch on the very edges of his mind. He was tempted to close off the boundaries of his mind, just to prevent any resentment from peeking through when he found out- as he was sure he would- that Nydo was being chosen to represent them both at some meeting with powerful officers or high ranking members of the Stormtrooper army. 

Unable to bring himself to do it, though, he opened his mind further to his brother instead. Immediately, he realized that his brother was sitting in his own room, rather than being led to a meeting. 

_Where are you?_

His brother’s question wasn’t as clear as normal speech would be, but the images coalesced themselves into a clear idea so quickly that it might as well have been speech. 

From the various readings that Akela still struggled through, their bond and natural connection wasn’t common among Force users - but wasn’t unheard of. Two Jedi sisters near the fall of the Old Republic had been an unusually effective team. While they met their end when the Emperor ended the Republic and the Jedi’s corrupt rule over the galaxy, Akela was sure that he and his brother would have a less unfortunate way to serve. 

_Why do you always think of them?_ Nydo questioned as Akela rounded the last hallway towards their rooms. When Akela opened the door, his brother was lying on Akela’s bed, still dressed in his training clothes, his shoes scattered on the ground next to it. 

“Why are you on my bed?” Akela asked instead.

“It was closer,” Nydo mumbled, “They made me take on some of their more promising stormtrooper advanced recruits.” 

“How many?” Akela asked.

“Four,” Nydo mumbled, grunting in pain as he tried to sit up and get off Akela’s bed while Akela reached for his trunk and some clean clothes.

“That’s promising, at least,” Akela said, opening the lid and pulling a clean set of the neutral black and gray uniform that he and Nydo had been given. They were, as far as he knew, the only ones who didn’t have a full and codified uniform outside of the Knights of Ren themselves. They all chose to wear black to honor the Dark Side, but none of them _had to_. 

“Yeah, I hope so.”

“Well, I mean the fact that they even pulled you aside for something like that-”

“But you and Tirzah Ren were sparring today-”

“Which you’ve gotten to do at least two more times than me!”

“There were new people today. It’s different.”

“There’s no way there were new people. If they were new people, they would have pulled you to demonstrate, not me. They always-”

Their door chimed a second before it opened. 

Akela, who’d managed to change his pants while he and his brother squabbled, hurriedly pulled on his clean shirt before Captain Proga entered. 

Akela looked over his shoulder at Captain Proga, “do they need Nydo?”

“They need you both,” Captain Proga said quietly.

Captain Lucius lurked over her shoulder, then nodded at Nydo, who pulled himself to his feet. While Proga was always more forthcoming, Lucius was taciturn and grim. He and Nydo seemed to get along, at least.

Nydo sighed as he stood and straightened. He stretched, arms over his head, and then let them flop to his sides, “are we supposed to be doing something else today?”

“You weren’t originally, but now you are,” Captain Proga said. 

“Is it another examination?” Akela asked, pulling his boots on. They were given the same boots as the First Order junior officers and trainees, but that was where the overlap ended. 

“Of a kind, yes,” Captain Proga said. 

“Are you going to tell us anything about what’s happening?” Akela asked.

“No,” Captain Proga said. She looked at the boys, then smiled warmly. 

Akela groaned. He resisted the urge to run a hand through his short hair and trudged along after the two officers. 

Akela resisted the urge to grab Nydo’s hand as they approached a door he didn’t recognize. He’d never been inside a place with such high security before, and he wasn’t sure what it could mean. 

Captain Progra entered a passcode, then waited. Akela reached out, mentally, to count the minds on the other side of the door. He immediately ran into a barrier, the mental equivalent of a durasteel wall, and retreated. He glanced to his left to see the corner of Nydo’s mouth was lifted. 

Great, now his brother knew. 

The door opened from the other side, thankfully, without any more embarrassment on his part. The other side looked like some kind of armory, with multiple rooms for weapons and gear. The walls were a matte black, distinct from the shiny and well-maintained hallways outside. 

The image of pitted and rocky walls appeared in Akela’s mind. The light was dim, with only handheld equipment serving as any kind of illumination. He didn’t have a word for _where_ he was, but the cool and damp-smelling place had a sense of _in_ and _under_ about it. 

Akela struggled for the word for a moment, then thought, _what was that?_

_A cave,_ the ever-present, deep voice in his head responded. 

Akela had asked Captain Proga, weeks ago, if it was normal to hear your own thoughts and, apparently, it was. Experiencing too many voices was unusual for people and could even be a problem, but most humans had some degree of mental dialogue. 

This place reminded him of the aforementioned cave, however. There was a distinct otherness about the place, as though it was supposed to be entirely separate from the militaristic order outside. Even though all of the weapons and armor in the side rooms they could look into were organized and cleaned, they weren’t pieces that Akela recognized from any stormtrooper he’d seen or any of the training rooms he’d been in before.

“What is this place?” Akela whispered. No one had told him to be quiet, and he hadn’t seen anyone yet, but it still felt like he was supposed to be quiet here. He felt an intense urge to make sure his footsteps didn’t echo too much.

“These are rooms designed and maintained by the Knights of Ren, specifically,” Captain Proga explained, “First Order officers don’t have free access to this place, but you two were requested specifically.”

“Because we have the Force?” Nydo asked.

“Yes,” Captain Proga said, nodding and leading them further down the hall. She paused at a door towards the end of the hallway and knocked, “you two are both potential recruits for a new branch of the stormtrooper program, the First Order officer’s school, and the Knights of Ren. They’ve seen you train and use the Force, but, apparently, they’re looking for something else on top of that.”

“What are they looking for?” Akela asked, his throat tightening with nerves suddenly.

“I have no idea,” Captain Proga admitted. She knocked on the door and looked over her shoulder at the two teenagers before the door opened, again from inside. 

The room was almost totally empty. It was lit from above by stark white lighting, with nothing inside but a series of tables lined with various helmets, masks, and cowls. 

The only occupant of the room was a black-clothed and helmeted knight that Akela didn’t recognize. The figure within the helmet gently brushed their consciousness against Akela’s, almost like a greeting. He was reminded vividly of watching some kind of feline animal butt its head against that of a younger kitten. Where that vision came from, Akela didn’t know, but he couldn’t ask about it - because the stranger was speaking behind a modulator. 

“This gear is yours to explore and try on. If you find something you feel is suitable and fits, let us know. You can only choose one item, and you must do so alone. Choose wisely.” 

Akela stepped inside, his hand bumping Nydo’s as his older brother did the same. The officers, however, remained outside. Akela glanced over his shoulder as the door slid shut, leaving him and his brother alone with the helmeted stranger. 

Akela glanced at his brother for a second, then turned to look back at the helmets placed before them. Nydo immediately stepped further into the room, skirting two tables without much more than a glance at their surfaces before he settled on one intently, exploring the table furthest on the right from the door. The small area had been set up to give them only about sixty or seventy items to choose from, but they were arranged in a circle with one table in the center. 

Akela started at that table, closest to the door. He knew Nydo was trying to investigate whatever they’d set furthest away from him. He had a natural suspicion about him and wanted to see what their handlers had set out of reach, in order to make sure nothing was being hidden or kept from him.

Akela wanted to see what had been set before them and, possibly, why. Akela looked down at the helmets in front of them. There were three laid out on the first table with another two facing outside. He leaned down to inspect the ones in front. 

One was a simple helm with a semitransparent viewplate, which reminded him of the Mandalorian helmets he’d learned about during his studies. The only difference was that this helmet had a small metal sliver in the center of the viewport, between the eyes. 

It was fascinating, but only due to its novelty. From what he could tell, it was the only one in the entire room with that feature bisecting an otherwise wide viewplate. 

Akela looked at the helmets in front of him. He could see the utility of all of them but did not feel aesthetically drawn to any one in particular. He lifted one, an odd design that protected the head and face, but left the eyes visible. He looked into the eye holes, absently opening his mind. Something in the Force hummed, not on the helmet or inside it, but within it, like something lived in the spaces between the particles of the helmet itself. Akela nudged just one of those spaces. Suddenly, his consciousness was overrun. 

_Akela saw a rain-soaked and rocky planet and raced through the ruins of a building that was abandoned and desolate, but far too young to be a ruin. He wasn’t human, no, his night vision was too good for that, but he was humanoid. The scene changed, and a tall figure stood next to him, wielding a red lightsaber with a flaming crossguard._

_**Master. This was his master.** _

_He was on the ground, now, and a dark-skinned man stood over him, wielding a lightsaber that was a bright, nearly glaring white._

_He was surely dead. His weapon, a thin red lightsaber gifted to him when he finished his training, was out of reach. Suddenly, the glare from his enemy disappeared. The figure- **Alucard** Akela suddenly remembered- had vanished.   
When Akela tipped his chin up to see what had happened, he saw his master, Kylo Ren, walking over to him, one palm still raised from where he had thrown Alucard back._

_“Trachiva,” his gravelly voice hummed from behind the voice modulator. Trachiva- no, he was Akela! Akela!- put out his hand and called his lightsaber into his hand and put it back on zir belt. **No. It was HIS belt. Akela was a man. Akela was a man.** _

_“I’m alright, Master,” Akela said, finally hearing Trachiva Ren’s youthful but inhuman voice. It was also altered by its own modulator, but Akela could hear the difference between the voice of the knight and zir master._

The world suddenly jolted back into place. Akela dropped the helmet and grabbed his head, groaning. 

“Are you okay?” 

Nydo’s voice was too loud in Akela’s ear, but he leaned into the hand that his brother placed on his shoulder. He held his head tightly, closing his eyes. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked up to see Captain Proga leaning over him as well, her dark eyes fixed intently on him. 

“Who is Trachiva Ren?” Akela mumbled, blinking back tears. 

Captain Proga’s dark eyebrows shot up, and her brown cheeks grew a little pinker, but otherwise, she didn’t display her shock or distress. 

“Ze was a knight. Ze died a few years ago,”; Captain Proga explained.

“Ze wasn’t human,” Akela said. 

Nydo looked between Akela and Captain Proga, “Trachiva Ren?”

“It was zir helmet,” Akela explained, “and I- I think part of zir consciousness was in there, still, somehow. I saw zir memories.” 

“I- It looks like the same helmet, but I didn’t know it was the same one,” Captain Proga said. 

“I didn’t know we could do this,” Akela said, gesturing to the helmet, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know,” Captain Proga said softly. 

“How didn’t you know?” Nydo countered.

“You must understand, you two are the first knights to be born within the First Order,” Captain Progra said seriously, “there have been children put into the Imperial cadets and the officer’s academy, but none have ever had the Force.”

“Did you know Kylo Ren?’ Nydo asked as Akela blurted, “did you know our father?”

Captain Progra smiled, “to answer both questions: not well. I was assigned to a distant outpost for a long time and brought back to work with your rehabilitation specifically.” 

“Oh,” Akela said, struggling to bury his disappointment. Every time he felt like he learned a little bit about himself, his father and brother, or his life before the accident, or the First Order itself, it slipped away.


	9. We Are So Accustomed To Disguise Ourselves To Others, That In The End, We Become Disguised To Ourselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our favorite blue-eyed purse thief is back!

**_“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”_ ― François de La Rochefoucauld**

Rey took a deep breath, smoothing down the front of her tunic and inspecting her reflection intently. She reached up, chewing on the edge of her them as she scrutinized the edge of her top.

"Are you okay?" Todra asked.

Rey jumped, turning around to see her friend standing in the doorway. Todra had put on formalwear, too. Rey noticed she'd chosen the traditional red of her home planet, her dark hair pulled back in a high ponytail.

"Do I pregnant?" Rey asked, turning back to her reflection. She'd settled for dark gray pants, a loose tan short, and armbands that climbed up her arms. Her lightsaber- nicknamed Goldenrod by people in the Holonet- was across her back. It was strange to wear clothes that were actually hers, rather than the borrowed clothes from the bunker.

"No," Todra said, walking over to see better, "I can tell, but I'm _looking_ for it, and I know what I'm looking for."

Rey chewed on her thumb again, then shook her head to clear it. She needed to focus if she was going to make it through all these meetings with Republic senators and committees. She sat down on the bed, closing her eyes and running her fingers down the middle of her hair to part it. After years of wearing her hair in more or less the same style, she could do it by rote, so she wasn't paying attention when she felt fingers on hers.

Dropping her hands, Rey looked over her shoulder to see Todra on the bed behind her, "I'll do it," Todra said.

"You sure?" Rey asked, "I can braid my own hair."

"Yeah," Todra said, "your braids are good, but if you're not going to make a grand appearance in full regalia or something, then we need to do something a little fancier with your hair."

"What's your plan?' Rey asked.

"I'm going to braid your hair against the side of your head, then I'll pull them into one down your back. It's nothing Leia was known for, but I think the intricate braid will remind people of her, consciously or not."

Rey smiled despite herself. On days like today, when she had to spend time cuddling up to politicians and dealing with squabbles that felt so petty with Snoke still at large, she missed Leia's political acumen, her negotiation skills, and, more importantly, her dry wit. 

"You're really good at this," Rey said as Todra expertly wove the tiny braids on the sides of her head underneath the hair from her crown, so it all blended smoothly. 

"We don't braid the way Alderaanians do, but I have a lot of practice," Todra said. 

"I forgot you grew up doing hair every day," Rey said, "I guess I always pictured you behind a screen of some kind or bending over a holopad to look up some random fact or study some new phenomenon or language."

"Oh, I did that, too," Todra said, her fingers deftly split Rey's hair near the base of her skull as she began a long, simple braid that would fall down Rey's back, "but that was usually at the time that someone was practicing on my hair. It was good that I was a girl because I did a lot of work, but not as much as my brothers."

"Why not?" Rey asked, absently calling one of her shoes into her hand from across the room.

"Because men braid their wife's hair every day," Todra said, "women can braid their own hair or their husband's hair, I guess, but it's customary that men do their wives' hair in intricate styles, especially before feast days and the like. My dad made my brothers practice on me so they wouldn't have to resort to wigs or styles too simple for a family of our station. He taught me, too. I was one of the first girls on my block to know every Saint style."

"Why did he teach you?" Rey asked, "wouldn't that be... weird?"

"Oh, it was," Todra said, snorting, "but he said that he would not allow my wife, should I have one, to settle for lesser braids on a feast day." 

"He said that?" Rey asked, laughing.

"He did!" Todra said, snickering, "oh, he was a funny one. One of my cousins married a woman when I was around seven, and that was the thing that troubled him. He said they always looked a little shabby, particularly during the fast of Saint Yadrine, and he it." 

Rey beamed. She suddenly had a vision of the day when would bring home someone for her to meet. He was a teenager already, and she knew he'd had childish crushes on various Resistance members before as all children did, but it struck her for the first time that he would one day introduce new members of her family. Members she didn't pick, of course, but new members all the same.

Would Ben be with them when he did? 

Would they be able to actually enjoy any peace?

Jonas was the fourth generation of his family to fight against the Dark Side and the legacy of Darth Sidious, but would he be able to enjoy a peaceful adulthood? Or would he live and die under the shadow of the First Order, too?

Rey told herself. A jolt of pain lanced through her thumb, and she stiffened. She looked down and pulled back the skin of her thumb away from the nail to see she'd accidentally broken the skin between the quick of her nail and the nail itself with one of her teeth. She put her hand back in her lap, rolling her eyes at her own mistake. She needed to stop chewing on the dry skin of her thumbs. Every time she did something like this, she sat and argued with herself about her biting habits, but she never did. 

She hadn't even realized that she'd been chewing on it, this time, which was its own unique brand of annoying. She was an adult and a Jedi, for Kwath's sake! 

Rey pulled on her shoes, then stood and inspected her braids, "Todra, this is beautiful. I look like a warrior. There's no other way to say it." She turned to beam at Todra, who dramatically tossed her ponytail and giggled.

"Now onto the fun part," Finn said. Rey glanced up to see him in the doorway.

"Yeah, we get to deal with the politicians," Rey said, rolling her eyes.

Finn snorted, then turned to his wife, "the kids are dressed and fed, apparently. Obran said he's good to stay with them."

Todra nodded, "he's a saint, I swear."

"He really is," Rey said, shaking her head, "c'mon. We're meeting at the little meeting space down the hall, right?"

"Yeah, over by those couches," Todra said. She stood, getting off the bed and stretching before she walked over to Finn and kissed the air over his cheek. 

Finn smiled at her warmly, catching her hand and pulling her back. Rey grinned at the sight of her best friend, pulling his wife back towards him so he could peck her on the mouth properly.

"You know, you should just apply lipstick yourself," Rey teased, "it'll save time."

"Ha ha," Todra said flatly, rolling her eyes and stepping out into the hall.

Rey's heart tightened. She was glad that she hadn't started crying, at least so far. Her emotions had been all over the place in recent weeks, but she'd spent far too long applying kohl around her eyes that she'd actually be furious if her tears ruined it. Inhaling slowly through her nose, Rey gathered all of her emotions together, imagining them curling in the center of her chest before she gently nudged them, letting them dissipate. 

"You ready?" Finn asked, looking at Rey. 

Rey strode down the hallway to meet Poe, Akuryate, and Gida' smoo, who were all milling around the little seating area. The hotel in Coruscant had included a little set of couches and chairs near the lifts, which was a level of normalized luxury that, even after twenty years away from Jakku, still boggled Rey's mind. 

Gida' smoo was pacing back and forth, a duffle bag next to one of the chairs. She was the only one not dressed for a formal appearance at the Third Galactic Senate. She'd traveled with them to visit her parents before she and her new crew would begin their journey to find more Force-sensitives to potentially train. 

Rey walked straight to Gida' smoo, who opened her arms without hesitation and hugged her former Master, "how do you feel?" Rey murmured, holding her tightly for a moment before letting her go and looking intently into her amber eyes. 

"Nervous, but ready," Gida said. She reached up and rubbed behind her left ear cone nervously. 

"You'll be fine," Rey said. She touched Gida's elbow, looking down at her former padawan, "you've run your own ship before."

"Yeah, but we were just scouting for artifacts before. We weren't looking for people. People can say "no," or their families can get in trouble for helping you, you know? Before, we were just tracking temples and anything the Empire hadn't destroyed already."

There was something else, something hanging in the air over Gida' smoo's head like a multi-ton weight. Rey was fairly sure what it was, but she still needed to ask. She needed Gida to give voice to her worries, for her own sake. 

"There's another reason," Rey whispered.

"Last time I led a crew, a bunch of people died," Gida' smoo whispered. Tears welled in her eyes, but she tipped her head up, blinking rapidly to dispel them, "I lost my navigator, my first mate, R2-D2 and Luke." 

"That wasn't your fault," Rey said. She'd known that response was coming and lowered her mental walls to Gida could feel the absolute conviction she spoke with. 

"It feels like it is," Gida' smoo whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of unshed tears, "I called everyone to Ladiri, and now they're dead."

"They're dead because they were fighting the First Order, who would have come either way," Rey said, "instead, they would have killed you and your entire crew, Kylo Ren never would have defected, Darth Vader's lightsaber would have ended up in the hands of Snoke, and Arya and Anjat Ren would still be out there," Rey said. She turned to look Gida' smoo in the eye, reaching up gently to touch one of the bands she'd tied around her lekku. Rey had bought her that one at a market somewhere, ages ago. She couldn't remember where exactly, but there were preserved insects suspended in the stone, many of which still glittered in the right light. 

"Gida, you made the right call. Someones, even when you do that, people end up dead. It's the great tragedy of war," Rey said, "The Rogue One mission was a success, and every one of the soldiers on Scarif died. Sometimes, saving the galaxy doesn't involve bringing everyone one." 

"What if I fail?" 

"You won't," Rey said firmly, "but even if, even if you do, we'll be alright. You don't know who you're meeting or what their stories are. You can only try your hardest, hope they'll listen, and let them know the door is always open." 

Gida' smoo nodded, "how do I know where to go first?"

"What's calling to you most?" Rey asked, rubbing a hand up and down Gida'smoo's upper arm. 

"Cantonica," Gida said immediately, "I know there are more people on other planets, but there's something about Cantonica."

Rey nodded, "just be careful where you land. They have a lot of wealthy resort towns. Don't try to go straight to somewhere like, I don't know, Canto Bight, or anything crazy. You'll get arrested, and the traffic laws there are incredibly strict," Rey said, "and the last thing you want is to lose time on a mission because you parked in the wrong place."

"Got it," Gida' smoo said, nodding. 

"You'll be fine," Rey said, cupping Gida's face between her hands, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead, "I have faith in you."

Gida nodded, curling one hand around Rey's wrist gently, and leaned into a touch, "thank you." she whispered.

Rey straightened and looked down at her padawan, "are you leaving from here?"

"My crew and I are going to meet here in a few minutes," Gida' smoo said, "I just wanted to see you all off, first."

"Well, c' mere then," Poe said warmly. He walked over to Gida'smoo, opening his arms and hugging her tightly. Gida' smoo smiled, leaning her head against Poe's. Rey could see that Poe was saying something to Gida, but couldn't hear what it was.

Todra and Finn waited over to the side for their hugs. Todra pressed her lips together, trying to stop them from trembling. She failed but seemed to settle for wrapping her arms tightly around Gida' smoo before the young twi'lek turned to hug Finn. 

Finn rested his chin on top of Gida's head, then closed his eyes tightly, "you'll be alright." he murmured. 

Gida hummed a response, closing her eyes back. 

Rey smiled. She reached over and touched the 'DOWN' button for the lift, watching Finn lean side to side for a moment before letting Gida' smoo go. 

The lift arrived with a small chime. As the doors slid open, Poe, Finn, and Todra all sighed as one and stepped onto the lift. The four of them turned to watch Gida' smoo as she took in a deep breath and squared her shoulders as she turned to face her team.

"I love you," Rey called through the door.

Gida' smoo turned her head and beamed, "I love you, too!" she called as the doors slid shut, and the lift began to lower. They rode in silence for the space of a heartbeat. The emotions of everyone inside the lift seemed to curl inward and swim around and through them all. It twisted Rey's heart, then she finally let out a hiss of air through her teeth. 

"Ugh, now I have to talk in front of a bunch of bigwigs," Rey growled, tilting her head back and groaning. 

Todra laughed thickly, breaking the tension in the space finally.

***

Ben nudged Jonas awake, "come on, kid, we gotta get up," he said. Jonas growled and buried his face in his pillow. 

"I dun wanna," he mumbled. 

"I know, kid, me too," Ben said, chuckling. 

Jonas groaned again and rolled over. He stretched and pointed his toes before opening his eyes and looking up at Ben's face. Ben smirked and rubbed his jaw before he walked over to their bags to get his clothing. 

"C'mon kid. It's a long day, but we can't be late. They'll probably kill us and put us on a meat hook," Ben said. Distantly, Jonas heard a grunt and the sound of fabric and Ben clearing his throat. After a second, Jonas rolled out of bed and onto the floor. He walked over to the water basin, then splashed water onto his face. He turned, crossed back over to their bags, and pulled a clean-ish shirt from the pile. 

"We're going to have to do laundry soon," Jonas mumbled. 

"You mean _you're_ going to have to do laundry," Ben said, "you have more days off than I do."

"Kriff you," Jonas said. 

"Kriff you, too, kid." 

Jonas put on a clean shirt, then changed into fresh pants and pulled on his shoes, "do we have food for breakfast?"

"We actually do!" Ben said happily, chucking a nutribar at the pile of clothes next to Jonas. Jonas sighed but didn't complain. He'd learned the hard way these past few weeks that nutribars were food. In this part of Coruscant, they were a delicacy, especially for people like them, who were trying to save up to get to the next place. They had money hidden and safe at all times, but they needed a lot if they were going to get a ship nice enough to let them leave whenever they wanted to. Jonas walked back to his bed, sitting down and downing what was left in last night's water bottle. 

"How are you doing?" Ben asked, sitting down next to him.

"I'm tired," Jonas admitted.

Ben looked down at him, his dark eye roaming over Jonas's face. They'd both let their hair grow out, partly because they were too lazy to try and cut it and partly because, in a pinch, they could cut it much shorter in order to disappear. Jonas finished his water, leaning back to make sure the last drops fell onto his tongue. 

Riia, he was tired. 

He couldn't believe that there were families who had been living in this sector of Coruscant for decades. It was absolutely mind-blowing to him. 

"Hey," Ben said. He nudged Jonas's foot with his own, stirring Jonas out of his thoughts, "we have to go, or we'll be late."

"Won't they just fire us?" Jonas asked weakly, standing and pulling a jacket on.

"If they fire us and we don't get rehired immediately, then we could lose our room."

"But you can sleep as late as you want on the streets."

"I'm too old to be a prostitute." 

"Now, don't say things like that! I'm sure you'd get lots of offers, even at your age. Look, if you weren't my dad-"

"Finish that sentence, and I'll give you a concussion," Ben growled, locking their door behind them and nodding for Jonas to walk down the stairs ahead of him. 

Jonas snickered, glancing over his shoulder just in time to see Ben shake his head and roll his eyes. Jonas pulled the hood of his jacket up as he and Ben stepped out onto the street. Their level was unusually cold today, even with all of the exhaust and conductive material around them. Everything was so jammed in together that it usually meant the lower levels of the cities were warmer, but Jonas supposed that meant their area of Coruscant was heading into fall or winter. The changes in sunlight said that, even with all the avenues for warmth, they'd still experience chills here and there. It also meant more rain, even rain that fell off into the lower levels. 

Someone had figured out, a long time ago, that it was easier to insert a filter into pipes at the higher levels and then put artificial sprinklers at the lower levels of the city that let them experience their own "rain" when the upper levels did than it was to try to keep the lower streets clean and contain all of the water from above. It didn't help that the factories themselves could produce enough water vapor and heat to have an isolated weather system. 

"You think we'll get rain?" Jonas asked, looking around for one of the screens that publically announced oncoming rainfall.

"Kriff, I hope not," Ben grumbled. He shook his head and led the way up the street and back towards the factory. 

"How many more days you think we'll have to do this?" Jonas whispered.

"No idea," Ben said. His voice had a kind of clipped edge to it that Jonas knew meant a certain amount of oncoming trouble. Jonas was dancing on top of a subject that worried Ben: the future. When Ben got worried, he got cranky. 

"Got it," Jonas said. He just lowered his head and walked along, slouching with ease. As they walked, he was reminded suddenly of his and Rey's visit to Coruscant for Poe and Obran's wedding. That had been ages ago and several hours' ride on a train, but he remembered the way his mom had told him to look comfortable and to exude a sense of belonging. If he stuck out, he'd be in trouble, especially here. On the higher floors, gang activity was usually minimal, but here, the gangs did more work than the actual police did most of the time. Ben and Jonas had run-ins with them already but had always escaped unscathed and uncommitted. Jonas didn't want to look like an outsider, get himself pickpocketed, and then have to trade his soul to the gang in order to get his money back. He had the Force, which would help when he was inevitably forced to steal it back, but he didn't want to risk it. 

One wrong move, and he'd have a blaster bolt through him before he could think about putting up a shield. 

The Yahone Solar Panel factory was an oppressive building complex. They were lucky enough to work in the same sector of the same building. Most humans weren't fortunate enough to work near people they know. Their hands and opposable thumbs meant they were often given small and repetitive tasks in different sectors that were more difficult.

No one was going to ask a Wookie to adjust the wiring on several hundred panels a day. 

Ben and Jonas walked over to the entryway, stopping in front of the closed-circuit face scanner. As they did so, their original identification photo would flash up alongside their names. Jonas resisted the urge to close his eyes when the grim-faced version of himself listed as "Darren Errach" appeared. One of the strangest parts of this job was the daily eye contact with an absolutely unsmiling version with himself. 

Today, Jonas was walking boxes from one end of the massive factory of the others. Him, several young Wookies, and several other burly sentients. Jonas spent hours hauling boxes from where Ben and his crew were working and applying the final outer plates to the side, and another crew was testing the various sections of the panels. Jonas, who was always a floater, moving between different groups, depending on what the process needed, was tapped on the shoulder about three hours in. He was loading panels and other accessories into the shipping containers. 

It was hours of this kind of work. During breaks, he and Ben sat next to each other, drinking water and not talking, but otherwise, they just worked. It was aggressively repetitive work in an environment too loud to allow for any conversation and socialization. 

During their second legally-mandated break, Jonas felt Ben's presence lightly brush against his mind. After months together, Jonas no longer needed to think to recognize Ben's mind or his Force signature. 

_What is it?_ Jonas asked immediately. 

_I'm taking another shift after this,_ Ben responded. Jonas's mind was filled with the image of a Twi'lek they had been working alongside since they started at Yahone, _his kid is sick, and he needs to get home. One of the other guys is going to come back in four hours and finish the rest._

_He was working a double?_ Jonas asked. He'd seen this twi'lek around before. He didn't seem like someone who could pull off that kind of continuous work.

 _He really wants to get out of here,_ Ben shot back. 

Jonas nodded, sipping the last of his water and shrugging. He'd clock out at the end of his shift, let Ben have his overtime, and try to do some laundry and figure out food while his dad worked for four more hours.

 _Being poor is absolutely horrific,_ Jonas thought, shaking his head absently as the factory hummed to life again around them all. He knew, in the back of his mind, that he had a way out of this place. There was a backdoor, albeit one he had no interest in opening, that would take him far, far away from the poverty and desperation of this place. 

_How many billions of sentients live in poverty just like this?_ Jonas thought as he scrutinized one of the panels before he loaded it into the box. Noticing a scratch disguised along a crevice in the surface, Jonas walked over to the repair and inspection side of the building, placing it in front of one of the worker's station.

"What's wrong with it?" the worker said, picking it up and turning their compound eyes onto the panel.

"There's damage to one of the screens," Jonas said, "it's right next to where it connects to the edge."

"Oh, I see it," the repairman said, nodding. Jonas shrugged and turned away, walking back to his station. After another hour or so of work, a high whistle rang out, dismissing the first shift. Jonas looked up to see the first of the second shifters walking into the compound. Jonas stepped aside as a muscular togruta walked over to his station. He glanced over to Ben and waved. Ben waved back before taking a hearty swig of water as the work slowed to a crawl while the two shifts settled into place. 

Jonas clocked out and waved to the lone merchant stand by the main gate. The stand and a few rolling carts came between shifts to sell food, drink, and other necessities right after work. Jonas pulled his hood up and turned toward the house. He put his hands in his pockets, keeping his head down and listening to everything around him. Absently, Jonas searched the Force signatures of those around him, keeping an eye out for any Force-sensitives or anything familiar. 

As Jonas turned down a street riddled with construction. He walked under some scaffolding and felt something spark at the corner of his field of attention. It was a Force signature he recognized.

And they were Force-sensitive. 

Jonas resisted the urge to look over his shoulder as he realized Ta'el, the boy who'd stolen his purse, was close by. He kept moving until he realized that Ta'el was coming closer to him, and fast. He wasn't alone, however. He also sensed several other figures behind him. 

Jogging up to the bend in the street, Jonas ducked into a gap in the streets. It was almost an alley, but only large enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Jonas guessed it was a runoff point. Looking down the street, Jonas saw one figure running down the street, chased by several larger figures.

As Ta'el turned the corner, he entered a blind spot, and Jonas immediately stuck out his hand and grabbed him. Jonas yanked Ta'el back by the scruff of his shirt, then looking into his face, "what are you doing?" 

The group who had been chasing Ta'el was intent on their work, but not particularly clever, from what Jonas could tell. He gripped Ta'el's shirt tightly but struck out at the minds of the four who'd been hunting him, planting the image of a disappearing jacket at the far end of the street. Without breaking stride, the burly and furious group ran straight ahead, past their actual prey, and after an elusive jacket corner, they'd never find. 

"Running for my life," Ta'el said, looking over his shoulder anxiously, "where...?" 

"Jonas looked down each side of the street, making sure no one was there and, when the coast was clear, stepped deeper into the alley, and raised a hand to create an image to hide them, "how'd you do that?" Ta'el said, mouth falling open.

"Training," Jonas said absently. He turned his hand, buffering the sounds of their voices in case anyone or even the original pack came looking back. 

"Training from who?" Ta'el asked, looking at the sheer image of an alleyway too packed with garbage to be entered. 

"It's solid from the other side," Jonas said, "so you don't have to worry."

"You're a Jedi, aren't you?" Ta'el said, looking at him. Up close, his cheeks a little pink from running, his eyes looked like a blue flame under ice, somehow. Jonas took a deep breath and willed his face not to blush, either.

"Do you know any Jedi named Darren?" Jonas asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, no," Ta'el admitted, shrugging, "but there can't only be the four I know about." 

"There is," Jonas said, "I'm not a Jedi. I... I'll admit that I can use the Force, but I'm not a Jedi. There's a certain kind of training and such. I've got it from my dad. He's been training me."

Half-true. 

Jonas was still a Jedi padawan, so he wasn't a Jedi.

Jonas could use the Force. 

There a certain kind of training needed to truly earn the title of Jedi. 

He inherited a high midichlorian count from his father... and his mother. 

Ben training him since his padawan training was on hold for obvious reasons. 

Jonas wasn't sure how much of Truth Sensing an untrained boy from Coruscant naturally had, but he wasn't going to test it. It was safer to say things that were true, albeit while hiding the full picture. 

"Your dad has the Force, too?" Ta'el asked.

"Yeah," Jonas said. He looked into Ta'el's face as he felt his ears heat up, "so do you?"

"No, I don't," Ta'el snorted.

"You do."

"How do you that?" 

"I can tell," Jonas said, "you can probably tell that I have the Force, too."

Ta'el frowned. He looked from Jonas to the sheer cover and back, "what does it feel like?"

"Think of your situation awareness, right? When you don't see people, but you kind of know they're there, just out of your periphery? Think of how I feel in that space versus someone else," Jonas offered.

Ta'el looked up thoughtfully. He stared up at the bricked wall behind Jonas, thinking. After a minute of tense silence, his eyes widened, and his eyes met Jonas's, "oh, kriff, you're right."

"I am," Jonas said, pressing his lips together and nodding. 

Ta'el leaned against the far wall in earnest, letting his head meet the wall. He breathed heavily, his hands shaking. Suddenly, something moved at the edge of the alleyway. A woman turned, ready to walk into the alleyway. Ta'el tensed, pressing his hands against the wall and bracing for a confrontation, but the woman's eyes fell on the trash in the image, huffed, and turned sharply to walk back down the street.

"Kriff kriff kriff kriff," Ta'el mumbled.

"Yeah, it's a lot," Jonas said softly, "okay, here's the thing: you need training. You have a gift, I think. You could do a lot, but you don't know how."

"Who's gonna train me, you?" Ta'el asked, raising an eyebrow. 

"Yeah. And my dad." 

"The dad that was going to 'kill you' for revealing your powers to me?" 

"I mean, yeah, but he's still my dad." 

"No, he'll just kill to simplify things," Ta'el said, straightening and crossing his arms.

Jonas sighed, "no, he won't. I won't let him." 

Ta'el scuffed his shoes thoughtfully, looking down at the mostly-clean ground. Jonas could feel the twisted web of the emotion in Ta'el's chest, but he didn't press. There were times where you could press on the nest of conflict, and they would open up, but Jonas knew this wasn't one of those times. He let the silence hang in the air between them. 

Finally, Jonas decided to speak, "my dad gets off work in a few hours. How about you meet us somewhere. We'll meet on neutral ground so my dad can't kill you and get away with it."

Ta'el thought for a moment, then shook his head, "no, I want to meet somewhere private. If I'm going to meet your dad and talk about The Force, I want to be able to ask my questions."

"Okay," Jonas said. He raised his hand, ready to bite at a piece of dry skin off of the corner of his thumb. Remembering where he was and the general sanitation of the alley, he immediately dropped it to his side. 

Ta'el rubbed his hands together, "how do I contact you?" 

"I don't have any kind of device," Jonas admitted.

"So, how do I contact you?" 

Jonas leaned his head back for a moment, then nodded, "okay, here's what you'll do. You'll need to sit somewhere and open your mind to the Force itself. The walls you've put around your mind to protect yourself need to come down. I'll be able to find you once you do." 

"You realize that sounds absolutely crazy, right?" 

"Yeah, I do, but it's all I have," Jonas said.

"Fine," Ta'el grumbled, "now, how do I get out of here?" 

"Go out the other side. I'll lower the image there, and you can go. I'll wait a few moments, then go. I'll get rid of the mirage on this side when I go," Jonas said. He met Ta'el's bright blue eyes one more time before he let the disguise fade from the far end of the alley. Ta'el looked from Jonas to the end of the alley. He nodded awkwardly, then jogged to the end of the alleyway, peeked out the side, and then turned left. 

Jonas looked over his other shoulder, then walked to the far alley. He poked his head out, saw no one coming, and turned right, walking back towards the house. Once he was a block or so away, he let the image disappear, and he let himself disappear into the crowd of people leaving an administrative building.


	10. Love All, Trust a Few, Do Wrong to None.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I'll try post on time every Thursday

**“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” ― William Shakespeare, _All's Well That Ends Well_**

Gida’smoo looked carefully at the display as they landed on Bight. She turned to their officially-mandated passes and permits, drawing them up and double-checking that everything was in order. She looked up at her new crew, doing a headcount.

There was Gale, her only surviving leader from her original crew.

Drey Mott, a pilot of tremendous skill, although he was a bit young.

Dr. Jan Rholar, a doctor who’d decided to serve as a medical officer of sorts on the missions.

Finally, Elaiza Gregory, a human communications expert, Lasseya Toll, Tioshnakk Hu, a mon calamari friend that Drey had requested by name, and Kre Vhoth, a sullustan, who were there for firepower and support. Gida’smoo had known Lasseya before, back when he’d just been a Resistance fighter. He’d been cute, then. He still was, she could concede, but the burns covering half his face had changed him.

In the back of her mind, Gida’smoo wondered if it was the actual burns that made him less attractive or the way his personality had changed after that mission. He wasn’t so different that he’d been deemed a danger, the way others with head injury or trauma might be, but he’d become much more serious and distant. He wasn’t fun. It was like he’d aged a decade in the past year.

Gida’smoo had brought him along because she trusted him, but she also hoped that being around a mission that was less dangerous and more overtly positive would help somewhat.

_Anything’s better than this_ Gida’smoo thought, stamping out the inevitable internal response:

_Unless you get him killed, too._

“We’re approaching Cantonica,” Drey called back, shaking his scarlet-and-orange hair out of his face.

“We’re going for Canto Bight,” Gida’smoo said, rereading their pass information, “we have permission for a 72-planet hour park outside one of the Casino landing ports. Luckily for us, Poe called in a favor and got us garage space, so we’re looking for port TY-114-B. We’ll get directions from frequency 75.682.”

“They’re really finicky here, huh?” Elaiza said, switching their planet-level coms to the correct channel. She winced as she had to dial through the jumbled static of hundreds of conversation channels as the dial adjusted.

“Very,” Gida’smoo said, “Rey said if we park in the wrong place, we could be looking at jail time.”

“Why?” Drey Mott asked, even as a clipped and businesslike feminine voice came over the speaker and asked for their credentials.

“You can’t charge for exclusivity if you’re not exclusive,” Gale said, passing Elaiza their passes so she could read them to their specially assigned bureaucrat.

Gida'smoo leaned down and tightened the laces on her boots, watching the displays out of the corner of her eye. Here she was, finally facing her first real test as a recruiter.

Gida'smoo thought, resisting the urge to fidget with her shirt as she straightened up,

Well, technically, the first of the "Next Jedi" was Jonas, but kriff if she knew where he was.

_If I find you here, living it up somehow, I'll kill you myself,_ Gida'smoo thought, imagining Jonas's baby-faced grin at some glittering card table, like what she'd seen on the holofilms about a casino heist. She felt for her lightsaber hilt out of habit, thinking back to when she'd made it. Luke had helped her, rather than Rey. She spent more time with Rey in one-on-one combat training, but Luke was sent into battle less often, so he'd been her mentor for the more spiritual side of the Force. Rey could use it with incredible skill and natural talent, but Luke had spent years trying to understand the Force.

Gida'smoo had once hoped that he'd take her back to Ahch-To and show her the ancient caves and the settlements of those earliest interplanetary force users.

Well, that ship had long left dock.

"Sweet kwath, this thing is huge," Drey said, looking around at the parking center they were being led to. It was a massive complex as big as a city itself, comprised entirely of garages, rest stops, maintenance centers, and support staff. Gida'smoo was sure that there was an entire city inside and behind the outer ports that served to keep something like this running.

The sheer number of workers it would take to manage this with any efficiency meant there were probably a million sentients toiling away so a few thousand could enjoy luxury.

"Part of the size is for the big star cruisers," Gale said, leaning over the back of the captain's chair to see better, "they also have some massive inner garages so someone can bring a star cruiser all the way inside and do maintenance on multiple places at once. Canto Bight is both a luxury tourist destination, and a major maintenance center."

"How is it a mechanic's paradise and a place for overstuffed and overpaid starluffs?" Drey asked, wrinkling his nose as he angled their ship toward an opening garage port that had been assigned to them.

"Because overstuffed starluffs don't like to wait on ship repairs," Gale said, chuckling. He patted the back of Drey's chair encouragingly.

"How are we supposed to get to the actual city from here?" Elaiza asked no one in particular as she listened for further instructions.

"There's a rail system," Gida'smoo remembered, "they pile people on there and you get to sip champagne on the way in."

"I'm surprised the starluffs are willing to put up with that kind of wait," Drey said, snickering.

"That's what the champagne is for," Gale said. He looked up as they landed in their little garage, several levels above the lower points of entry where the larger starcruisers were held, "this place is pretty nice."

Once they'd landed and the garage door had sealed behind them, several droids and a mechanic jogged over, waiting for the cargo door to be lowered before they could enter. Behind them was someone else in a nicer, all-white uniform.

Gida'smoo led the way down, forcing herself to stand as straight as she could. The last thing she needed right now was to display any air of uncertainty, especially in a place this high-profile.

"Jedi Gida'smoo," the white-uniformed person said, bowing low, "I am Mx. Lyric Kantale, vice president of guest services for Canto Bight and the Marble Casino. I'm here to personally welcome you to our humble city and to ensure you get everything you need on your stay with us."

_Here to watch my every move, more like,_ Gida'smoo thought, resisting the urge to make a face. Instead, she replied, "Thank you, Mx. Kantale. It's wonderful to finally have to chance to visit a city with such a sterling reputation."  
"You flatter us, please," Mx. Kantale said, simpering as they led the way over to the elevator that would take them to the main rail station.

Everyone already knew of the plan to let Gida'smoo wander the city alone away from whatever docent, executive, bureaucrat, or bodyguard they'd been assigned. She was sure that there would be places the Casino wouldn't want her to visit and, just her luck, the person she sought would be there.

Gida'smoo thought as she ducked around several waiters and a card table. Now that she was here, the lights she'd seen in her dream from Luke might have been more than one force user, perhaps traveling companions or a family, all at the same place. There were enough people in the overcrowded casino for it to be possible.

Gida'smoo looked over her shoulder as she exited the casino to make sure she wasn't followed. Luckily, some woman in heels she shouldn't have worn tripped just as Gida'smoo had gone out the large open doors, so the watchmen had been distracted by that. She was probably still being surveilled somehow- it was a _casino_ after all- but no one was walking behind her or dragging her back to a more "appropriate" area of the complex.

Outside, the land was beautiful. Gida'smoo knew little about Cantonica outside of the fact that the wildlife was large and rather ferocious, but the landscape she could see beyond the fathier track was stunning.

The fathier track!

She needed a place she could be alone, in the quiet, to meditate and try and find her future force companion. For whatever reason, all the fathier races for the day had been cancelled, so the track would likely be abandoned in favor of more active entertainment.

_Please don't let me trip over someone going at it in the stands,_ Gida'smoo thought to herself as she jogged over to the silent arena. She sat on the bottom steps of one of the stairways up to the stands, closing her eyes and gathering herself. This place was intense, even when it was empty. Without much effort, she could feel the emotional weight of millions and millions of souls and moments and impressions in the Force all weighing in one spot.

Gida'smoo closed her eyes, focusing on the places where her body made contact with the seat and the ground. She withdrew her mind away from her extremities after a moment, instead choosing to focus on her breathing. She followed every inhale and exhale, devoting her entire attention there. It took a few moments, but eventually, she managed to reach out past the immediate boundaries of the Force and into the deeper sensations beyond.

The sound of her breathing became the only thing she could hear.

Jonas had always had more of a talent for these kinds of things. He and Rey both had a knack for sensing presences and activity within the Force without even trying. She could tell intent and identity immediately, distinguishing Force signatures even in a crowd if they were close by took no effort, but trying to sense hidden things took work and concentration.

Well, meditation.

Which was a strange kind of concentrated non-concentration.

Gida'smoo found herself sliding back into the same dream space she'd entered when Luke had last appeared to her. She'd seen so many lights then, Force users who were scattered across the galaxy. Now, she just had to focus and find the one **here**.

_Now that she was here again, she slid past planets with ease. At first, she'd been overwhelmed by the sheer number of planets and lights, each one their own consciousness centered in the Force. She'd entered this dream space dozens of times now, hence how they'd known to come to Canto Bight. Gida'smoo put out a hand, calling Cantonica to her. From there, she sensed herself on the planet's surface. Then she finally found the person she was looking for. There was someone, and someone close, who had the Force. They weren't just vaguely sensitive to it, either. Now that she was close, she could see that this person had been **using** the Force, at least in some way._

_They seemed to shine brightly within the Force, but their location didn’t make sense. Rather than being in a hotel or the area nearby, they were somehow in the track itself. She'd wondered if they would be in the city or one of the casinos, but whoever it was, they were inside the racetrack somehow. She considered the presence for a moment, trying to memorize it so she could track in a moment._

_Finally, she got a clear picture of it. She put out a tendril in the force, just in case, so she could trace where they were, but she was mostly certain._

Leaving the trance felt a bit like coming up for air. She took a deep breath, resisting the urge to shake water off her. It wasn't an uncommon sensation, especially if you were returning to a deeper dream space.

Gida'smoo opened her eyes, finally picking up the impression of the person she sought.

Instead of heading towards the casino, Gida'smoo headed toward the track. When she reached the soft, flat turf, she looked around to see if there was someone she'd missed, somehow, but no one was there. Glancing back towards the stands, Gida'smoo realized there were tunnels that led from the staging area under the stands and the concessions area. If she guessed right, there were stables underneath, which explained why she'd felt the presence both at the track and not.

Gida'smoo absently scratched the decorative band she'd put over her lekku, then walked over to the tunnel openings. The tunnels themselves, from what she could see from the doorway, looked unguarded, but they were covered and protected by heavy doors with several biometric seals.

_Figures,_ Gida'smoo muttered, rolling her eyes. She placed one hand on the bars next to the scanners, the green of her skin standing out sharply against the shining steel. Was everything in this place polished to within an inch of its life?

Opening her mind, Gida'smoo prodded the lock carefully, looking for exactly how it worked and what she should do. She smiled to herself as she remembered the hours she, Luke, Jonas, and Rey had all spent playing with locks and lockpicking when she'd been young. Han Solo had taught Luke almost everything he knew about smuggling and general thievery, and Rey had picked up a wide variety of unorthodox and incredibly useful skills during her years as a scavenger on Jakku. They'd ensured that even if someone put a force suppression device on Jonas or herself- which would be a feat in itself, considering how rare they were these days- they'd still have several tricks up their sleeves.

This lock, however, was not going to be a challenge. It was a simple code and bar scanner, which could be faked using pressure, thanks to the Force.

_Although…_ Gida'smoo pressed a little further, behind the scanners, and grinned in earnest now. The mechanism inside was incredibly simple and, when she dragged the few pins off to one side using the force, the lock clicked open, scanners undisturbed, and the door swung open. She knew these locks well, since they were one of Jonas's favorites. They were incredibly clever for anyone who wasn't force sensitive; the combination of software, hardware, and careful design meant they were almost unhackable, and attempts to physically move the inner workings with anything but the Force itself would only result in a door that was basically fused shut.

"Only the best for Canto Bight," Gida'smoo murmured, stepping into the tunnels.

Her force user was nearby.

Very nearby.

In fact-

Something slammed into Gida'smoo from her right side, throwing her off her feet and onto the hard ground.

*****

Jonas paced back and forth as he waited for his dad to get home. Was this how normal teenagers felt? Was this a normal moment, full of anxiety over asking a parent for something you weren't sure they'd allow?

He'd always lived with custody shared by Luke and Rey, at least in theory. Looking back, he could see times when Luke bowed to Rey's wishes regarding some decision or another, since she was, in fact, his mother. Here with Ben, however, Jonas was experiencing the closest thing to an actual parent-child relationship he'd ever had, crazy as their situation was.

Ben hesitated outside the door and Jonas blushed when he realized why; Ben had felt his anxiety and was concerned about danger or an ambush.

_Kriffing great. Now he'll be suspicious,_ Jonas thought, mentally kicking himself.

"Come on in," Jonas called.

Ben slowly opened the door, most of his body shielded by the wall. When he peeked around the door and saw that it was only Jonas, his face immediately wrinkled in confusion, "Ri’ia, kid, I thought you'd run into trouble."

<em>I kind of did,</em>Jonas thought, remembering the street thugs chasing Ta'el.

"What's wrong?" Ben asked immediately.

"I- uh," Jonas said sighed, "I met someone."

"You- Jonas you didn't!" Ben said, looking down at Jonas. His mouth fell open and his dark eyes widened.

"No no no!" Jonas said, putting his hands up to soothe his dad a bit.

Ben's dark eyebrows lowered immediately. He tilted his head slightly and said, "what do you mean "no no no"?"

Jonas pressed his lips together for a moment, then said all in one breath, "it's the same person from before."

Ben put out a hand, leaning against a wall and crossing his right arm over his chest, "how does that make it any better?"

Jonas shrugged, anxiously tracing designs on their bed frame, "well, I don't think he'll turn us in for a bounty, for one."

Ben rolled his eyes, "and how can you be so sure?"

"I dunno. He just seems- I don't know- decent. He thinks we're Force users that are running, so the Jedi don't find us. He doesn't realize who we really are."

Ben lifted his chin, nodding at Jonas thoughtfully, "how old is he?"

"Maybe a year or two older than me, maybe. Why?"

"He's human?"

"Yeah," Jonas chewed on the edge of his thumb anxiously as he tried to understand this line of questioning, "why?"

"What color are his eyes?" Ben shook his dark hair out of his eyes as he stared at Jonas's face intently.

Jonas's face flooded with blood. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, groaning as his ears turned scarlet, "blue."

"Blue?"

"Like ice lit from below. Why?"

"So, he's good looking?" Ben's face was blank, but his eyebrows were raised. Jonas felt hot under his father's stare but forced himself to keep his voice casual.

"Well, maybe, but why are you kriffing asking?"

Ben's impassiveness finally broke under his exasperation "because that's why you think he's decent, nerfhead!"

Now it was Jonas's turn to be confused, "what?"

Ben's hands flew to his hair, "it's the oldest trick in the book, Jonas! It's literally the oldest trick in the book. Holy kwath, I thought you were better than this. Everyone thinks pretty people are nicer and more wholesome than ugly people. That's why you butter people up with a hoxy when you're running a con!"

"A what?"

"A hoxy. It's a good-looking person you use as a distraction or to guide them around so you can keep them where you want them, so they look where you want them to look," Ben shook his head.

Jonas stared at his Ben for a moment, totally confused as to how Ben knew so much about running a con. At that point, Ben's actual accusations sunk in.

"He wasn't lying. I could tell in the Force. He seemed genuinely shocked-"

Ben cut across him, "I can't even imagine what a con man with the Force would be like. You'd have an absolutely legendary smuggler, pirate- you name it!- on your hands."

Jonas's heart fell, but he said, "that's ridiculous."

"It's not. Force sensitivity is partly genetic, right? There was, thankfully, a whole generation of untrained would-be Jedi left out in the population in the first 20 years of the Empire. They had kids, who are around my age, give or take. Maybe even they've even had kids. This means you have a bunch of untrained Force-users wandering the galaxy who could have been powerful."

Jonas's stomach dropped to somewhere around his ankles, but he said nothing.

"Force sensitivity is like- it's like an instinct. You don't have to be trained in it to use it, at least partly. It's a survival mechanism, Jonas. That kid has likely created some unknowing technique that makes him a better scavenger or conman than anything else. And he didn't even realize it."

Jonas stared at Ben, "oh, kriff."

"Yeah," Ben said flatly, "kriff."

"No, Dad, I told him to meet us. I told him we'd train him."

"And why would you do that!?" Ben said, leaning forward to stare at Jonas.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time!" Jonas said weakly.

Ben straightened, groaning, "Fine. Fine." He scratched the base of his skull, "just answer me one last question."

"Anything," Jonas blurted.

"Does he have dimples?" The corner of Ben's mouth lifted.

"I-" Jonas was so thrown by the question that he couldn't even lie, "yeah."

Ben laughed, shaking his head in exasperation, "you and your mother are both so funny. You each have your own Types."

"I do not!"

"Oh, yes, you do. You like light eyes and dimples. Your mother likes tall men with dark hair."

Jonas's mouth fell open. He sat down slowly on the bed, suddenly trying to think through any person he'd met and found attractive who didn't have light eyes or light eyes and dimples.

Ben groaned, sitting down with his back against the wall, "let me think. I just- let me think."

*****

Every time Ben thought he'd gotten the slightest, barest grip on fatherhood, Jonas did something that sent him reeling.

First, it was just the sheer toll of keeping a teenager alive, fed, and safe.

Then he found out Jonas had revealed his powers to some pickpocket.

Now he learned this pickpocket was a Force-sensitive rogue with big blue eyes that Jonas had fallen for, at least partly. Jonas was fifteen- far too young to date, in Ben's opinion- and so he had, of course, run into the "bad boy's" open arms like something out of a teen holofilm. It was such a cliche that Ben would laugh if he wasn't so torn and frustrated.

This boy was a total unknown. Ben had no idea how much of a threat he posed, in the Force or as a potential source of exposure.

The only way to know was if he somehow managed to track down one Force signature he'd never met in a city of millions, which would be an absolute feat, or he could meet with this kid.

What are the odds that this untrained kid is powerful enough to take on me and Jonas together, even if he wanted to? Ben thought, running a hand through his hair. He was the closest thing to a classically trained Jedi in the known galaxy, descended from powerful Force users, and trained extensively in the Dark Side. Jonas was less well-trained, but he had a natural intuition for the light side and was a savant when it came to using a lightsaber.

Unless this stranger decided to bring the First Order itself to their meeting, he'd be outclassed. Luckily, however, Ben was beyond certain that if there was a First Order presence on Coruscant, he'd know. None of his knights- no, the Knights of Ren. He wasn't Master of the Knights of Ren anymore- were adept enough at cloaking Force signatures that they'd be able to hide from him for very long. At the very least, they wouldn't be able to hide a group for any time at all.

What were the odds that a Coruscantan street urchin had the Force?

A street urchin with the Force has a distinct advantage. Maybe enough to explain how this thief managed to get the drop on Jonas in the first place, Ben thought.

The Force took an incredible amount of dedication, work, and training to master, but most real people wouldn't have to master it in order to find it helpful in normal life. In fact, even a slight extrasensory perception, one of the most basic talents honed in the Force, could be wildly influential in the hands of an ordinary person.

Or, at least a person trying to be ordinary.

Could that explain the Kessel run? Ben thought suddenly, remembering his father telling him the story of when he took the Millenium Falcon through the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs.

Even a slight ability to feel the boundaries of things, or to feel what was going to happen before it did, in a pilot who hadn't been trained to treat the Force as a sixth sense...

Ben groaned, a hand flying to his hair again before he could stop it. He didn't want to sit here and have an internal dialogue in front of Jonas, but he didn't have much of an option.

Across from him, Ben could practically see a glowing 'Welcome' sign hanging from Jonas's mind. He wanted Ben to see this Ta'el through his eyes.

If I do that, the only thing I'll end up with is a firm grip of exactly what shade his eyes are, Ben thought. Finally, however, he decided to try it. He reached across the room, using tendrils of his own awareness to sort through the memories that Jonas had brought to the forefront. They weren't clear the way some memories were. Sure, they were absolutely crystalline, but as Ben turned them over in his own mind, he could see a distinctive rising tinge to everything Ta'el said. His eyes were the most beautiful. Everything he said, even the most basic phrase, was somehow charming, endearing, or both.

_Wow, kid, you're deep in denial_ , Ben thought, not even carrying that the words slid between his own mind and into Jonas's.

Everything around him took on a slightly orange-pink color; so, the kid was embarrassed about being utterly besotted with his new potential student. At least Jonas was somewhat aware of how silly this all might end up being.

Ben withdrew, hoping his own copies of these memories might look less filtered in his own mind. They were mostly useless, even after he left Jonas's sphere of influence, he eventually tossed them more or less aside.

This Ta'el kid at least seemed to be nice. Jonas was right that there wasn't anything threatening or glaringly duplicitous in his Force signature, and someone as perceptive as Jonas would have noticed, entranced by long-eyelashes as much as he was.

One last thought appeared in Ben's mind, not from Jonas, but a memory of himself and Rey in the cave.

_Rey leans against him and the open hatch of the bunker as Jonas takes his lightsaber and a waterskin to walk the short distance to refill it._

_“I worry that he'll die alone, if we don't get off here," Rey says, her eyes fixed on Jonas's back._

_"We'll get off here eventually," Ben promises, even though some part of him wishes he could keep his little family away from the chaos of the galaxy, safe in their little corner of nowhere. It's only been in the past few weeks that he fully understands the Hermit Urge so many in his forerunners in the Force had succumbed to._

_Rey nods, but her uncertainty still hands in the air between them. Finally, she looks at him, "we need to find more people aligned with the Light. Not just to train them for war, but to protect them from being recruited by the Knights of Ren. I don't- I don't want Jonas to end up fighting alone against an army."_

_This is step one of making sure Jonas isn't alone if you die_ , Ben reminded himself. Finally, he exhaled and lowered his hands from his hair. He lifted his head and looked at Jonas, who was trying to appear casual, like he hadn't just been staring at Ben so intently that Ben could feel two little holes in the top of his head.

Ben sighed, "yes, but you are NOT allowed to date him. We're not here for any of that."

  
"I don't want to date him," Jonas said. It was too bad that his hair was pulled back because the tips of his ears were bright red.

  
"Sure, kid," Ben huffed.

  
"I'm really not."

  
_uh-huh,_

  
"Sure." _  
_

_"_ How are we going to do this?" Jonas said, looking at the floor and trying to change the subject.

Ben rested his head back against the wall tiredly, "we're going to meet him somewhere that's not here, and then he's going to come to us. I want to be there and be able to scope the place out ahead of time."

Jonas nodded excitedly, clearly relieved, "that's what I thought. I told him to expect that."

"How do you get ahold of him?" Ben gestured with one hand, toward Jonas's bag for whatever communicator he expected Jonas had.  
"The Force."

Jonas's head snapped up, "if he knows how to use the Force that well, then why are we training him?" _  
_

"I told him to open his mind, when he was ready, and I'd tell him where we are going to meet," Jonas said.

Ben waited for a long moment, expecting Jonas to take it back and say something else, but he didn't. The kid was serious.

Finally, Ben burst out laughing. He rested a hand on his forehead, still laughing, "you... I can't."

"What? Why are you laughing?" Jonas asked.

Ben let his legs stretch out, shaking his head and laughing still, "you- you just sound like my dad. This is the most strung together, seat-of-your-pants, there's-no-way-this-can-work plan I've heard and it sounds exactly like something he would have proposed."

"Is he the reason you know so much about con men?" Jonas asked, looking over Ben's head and nodding thoughtfully.

"Yeah," Ben said, his laughter fading as he thought back to the earliest memories he had with his father, sitting in the Falcon and talking about locks, deception, picking pockets, how to steal different ships and ways to evade capture, "my dad taught me most of what I know."

"And the rest?" Jonas sat back down on the bed.

"Your mother, my mother, and two of my Knights of Ren. They had been involved in espionage before. The line between spies and con men is nonexistent, really."

Jonas tilted his hair, his dark eyes appraising Ben. Ben met his eyes, then raised an eyebrow and asked, "what?"

"I don't know," Jonas said slowly, "I think I just kind of forget that you didn't spend all your time prowling around First Order star destroyers."

The corner of Ben's mouth lifted, "No, I didn't."

"Where did your dad learn how to be a smuggler? Did his dad teach him?"

Ben stopped, unable to control his expression as he stared, nonplussed, at his son, "no. He- no one told you?"

Jonas shrugged, his ears warm and red, "I mean, Master Luke told me that Han taught him how to pick locks and stuff, but he didn't tell me about Han's early life. Everything I ever heard about Han was from General Leia, but she died when I was 5."

Ben nodded, leaning his head back against the wall, "I never thought about that. Han was born and raised on Corellia. He grew up in and around gang life. That's how he learned to fly the way he did. Ended up in the Imperial army somehow. That's where he met Chewie. "

"I'd always wondered how Han managed to save Chewie enough to incur a life debt."

"They never- they refused to tell me how exactly that happened, but I know they were together for a while before they met Luke."

"And then he joined the Rebellion?"

Ben snorted, "reluctantly."

"But he still joined," Jonas said. When Ben opened his eyes and looked at Jonas, his face was neutral, but Ben could tell the kid was probing, "it doesn't matter why."

“I guess not," Ben said, waving one hand.

"If he hadn't joined, you wouldn't have been born," Jonas said, stretching out on his side on the bed.

"He probably regretted it in the end," Ben muttered.

Now that Ben thought about it, however, he wasn't so sure. He thought again, for the thousandth time, about the vision he'd had of his father right before their crash on Athiktos. That had only been five months ago, but in all honestly, it felt like it had been years. Han had looked like he had on Starkiller Base, which made it all the more vivid for Ben, even months later.

_“We’re going to crash!” Kylo- he’d still thought of himself as Kylo, then- shouts. He grabs the boy by the arm and throws him into a chair and grabs onto it for dear life. He can feel Jonas’s- his son’s- hands, holding onto him for dear life as he wraps his hands into the straps he hasn’t been able to tie around the boy._

_He is probably going to die. He is going to crash, break every bone he has, and die. He desperately tries to reach out in the Force for anything in the world outside to slow their descent, but the pain in his head makes it impossible to feel anything. He looks up through streaming eyes and sees a hazy blue figure, calm and untouched in the trembling ship._

_Kylo’s eyes roam the familiar vest, shirt, and steady eyes, “Dad.” Kylo chokes out, unable to form any other coherent thought._

Han Solo should have regretted having Ben.

Han Solo shouldn't have appeared to Ben.

Well- he shouldn't have because he couldn't. Han Solo, for his many useful skills and his incredible flying abilities, didn't have the Force. Not only did he not have the Force, he never had the training to protect his consciousness from the Will of the Force in order to appear again after death. Qui Gon Jinn had taught his old master, Master Yoda, who had later revealed the secret to Obi Wan Kenobi. Somehow, Anakin Skywalker had managed it, but Ben wasn't sure if that was something the Emperor had taught him, something he'd learned of the force in the 20 years he'd served the emperor, or if it was his own natural connection to the Force.

_"They say Anakin Skywalker was born of the Force itself!"_ Tobey had always been so obsessed with things like midichlorian counts. He'd spent hours memorizing the strengths and weaknesses of generations of Jedi. "

__He had the highest midichlorian count ever."_ Back in those days, Tirzah Ren had been more comfortable with books than sparring. She hadn't been calles Tirzah Ren, then. Kriff, it had been a long time since he'd last thought about her- their- younger years_

__

__

__"It's still in R2D2's records!"__ Ben had been awkward, then, but he'd always been R2's favorite, which made him a kind of gatekeeper for the best information and holos, since he could get R2 to show him just about anything.

Ben closed his eyes and massaged his forehead, trying to ease the tension there that was starting to pain him in earnest. It had been years since he'd last thought about his old friends at the Jedi Temple.  
Kriff, so many of them were dead now. Only Tirzah Ren, Umdal Ren, Athan Ren, and himself still lived.

Even R2D2, the survivor of so many battles, daring escapes, and impossible odds, was gone, too.

  
“What was Han Solo like?" Jonas blurted out suddenly.

  
"What?"

  
"Look, we have to wait for Ta'el at this point, and this is literally the most I've heard you talk about him ever. You've talked about Mom and your training, but you've never talked about Him." Jonas said, sitting on Ben's bunk and staring up expectantly at him.  


Ben groaned, rubbing his face, "he was... I don't know..." he sighed, thinking back decades, trying to remember what he could have of the Han Solo he'd actually met, rather than the one he'd heard about on holos or from his parents' friends or even his own study of galactic history.

  
"He was gruff."

  
"Gruff?"

  
"Yeah." Ben said, thinking, "he never had much time for emotions, even though he had a terrible sabacc face when it came to my mother. He could play cards well and could lie to everyone but her. Eventually, I think he just gave up and decided it was easier to be elsewhere than to actually have to face her."

  
"What do you mean "elsewhere"? Fighting the empire?"

  
"Some, yeah, but the war was over, for all intents and purposes, by the time I was born. There was nothing left to fight and, after the battle of Jakku, there wasn't anyone else TO fight, except the factions of the Rebellion itself. Everyone had their own idea of how to govern, and who should be in charge of who, and what should be regulated, or how and where taxes should be paid to. Han hated that. He never had time for it."  
“What was Leia like?”

  
“I don’t know. She was always missing, when I was small, then I was sent to Luke and I was 7. I was there until I was 18 and we raided the school. She visited me once a year or so, until Darth Vader’s identity was made public. I knew who she was in the news, but as my mother? She was a stranger.”

  
“And Han Solo?”

  
“He visited more often, but he missed as many visits as he scheduled. When Leia gave me a date, I knew she’d be there. With Han, I could expect a cancellation or postponement or delay every other visit, if I was lucky. At least once a year, he’d just not show up. No message. No warning. Just a half-hearted apology later in the week. Every time he gave me a time, it was like I was placed on the edge of a cliff.”

  
Jonas nodded slowly. He leaned back on his side, resting his head on hand thoughtfully. Ben couldn’t see into the boy’s thoughts anymore, but he could practically hear the swirling thoughts within. However much Rey had said about him before, Jonas clearly hadn’t heard anything about his early life.

  
“I had a life before your mother, you know,” Ben said gently, “I was almost 30 when we met. She was 19, but she’d had a life before me, too.”

  
“I guess I never thought about what they MEAN,” Jonas said.

  
“Honestly, I should have known who you were the minute I heard your full name. Quorvin was the name of a scavenger she knew on Jakku.”

  
“She told you about Jakku?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“She never told me anything.”

  
“You’re the son she wants to protect. I was a grown man and a warrior- a killer,” Ben pressed his lips together, remembering the tear-filled conversations about Rey’s early life. They’d spent hundreds of hours together, him forcing her to relive all her past pains, so she could harness the dark side to her bidding.

  
At the time, he’d preened at the opportunity to show her off to Snoke, but he winced now.

“And when you were my age?”

  
Ben snorted, but his mind was suddenly full of a dark-eyed face framed by straight black hair that was always too long. They’d looked like brothers or cousins more than lovers when they’d wandered the galaxy, looking for relics and other recruits for the Knights of Ren. This had been in the days before their helmets and their recognition. They’d been ghosts.

“I was a wanderer,” Ben said thoughtfully. He looked at his own hands. The small scar on his right thumb, where his ring had protected him from losing it entirely, was still there, even after thirty years.

“You were alone?”

  
“No,” Ben said, shaking his head and wrinkling his nose at the thought. He’d have been utterly lost on his own.

“Who was with you?”

“Eric, for one,” Ben murmured, his eyes still on that tiny white scar, “technically, his name was Oshrak Ren, but he was still Eric to me. Tirzah Ren- you’ve seen her face on the holos. She’s the only one who's ever been seen without her helmet-, Umdal, Athan,

Dargus, Kaiser, and Tiberius. We traveled together after we left Luke’s school.”

“Tirzah Ren used to be one of Luke’s students?”

“Yeah. Her name was Alema then, but she was a student.”

“What happened between you and Eric?”

Ben sighed, resting his forearm on his knee and looking at his son’s face. Kriff, he felt old, recounting lost loves like some grandfather on a porch, “he was a student a year or so younger than me. His parents were some kind of merchants in one of Coruscant’s upper levels. That’s how they found Luke. Luke didn’t care much about the old prohibitions on attachments, but he didn’t like students getting distracted. He tried to keep me and Eric apart for a while. Now, I think he thought I would lead Eric to the dark side.”

“And did you?”

“No more than Tirzah or Dargus did. We were all in contact with Snoke. All talking to each other. We were a little group of disenchanted teenagers who’d been taken from our families or sent away because we were too much of a burden to care for. We understood each other and Snoke offered us a better way.”

“How long were you together?”

“Three or four years. Eventually, things fell apart, but there was something there that Snoke allowed in the beginning. It kept me from feeling the loss of my family. He died a few years later.”

Jonas sat up, “That’s where Erach came from. That’s why we’re Darren and La Kai Errach.”

Ben shrugged, “I needed a name on the fly that wasn’t one of Han Solo’s old ones. Those are so well known they’re almost cliches.”

“Did you love him more than Mom?”

“No,” Ben said, shaking his head, “Eric and I were a pair of teenagers trying to cope with rejection and Snoke’s abuse and a cruel galaxy. Your mother… she was like fire after years spent on an ice planet- almost literally. She had a fierceness and a lightness. I’d felt a stirring in the Force for years, always out of reach, always in the corner of my eye. Then I saw her at Starkiller base.”

“That’s it? You just saw her?”

“Well, no,” Ben’s face warmed, “technically, I saw her on Takodana. She tried to shoot me, so I took her prisoner.”

“Dad,” Jonas winced.

“Oh, it gets better,” Ben muttered, running a hand through his hair, “then, I interrogated her, invaded her mind, had my mind invaded in returm, found out she escaped kill-” the words killed my father caught in Ben’s throat. They scratched the inside of his throat on their way up. His voice cracked as he finished: “killed my father.”

Jonas’s mouth fell open. He leaned forward, his jaw merely hanging there.

“Then I chased her and Finn Alucard through the snow and nearly killed Alucard.”

“How?” Jonas whispered, shaking his head. Ben nodded. The understood, ”how did she end up liking you?” seemed to bounce between their minds.

“She called Anakin’s lightsaber- yeah, the one that became yours- and I realized that she had been the thing I’d been looking for,” Ben said simply.

“I used to look for you in the Force,” Jonas said.

Ben blinked, “what?”

“I used to look for you. I thought my parents were dead, and maybe they were in the Force, but I never found them for obvious reasons,” Jonas rolled onto his back, “when I first reached out for them, I think I found you. You were so far away and so cloaked in darkness that I couldn’t recognize who you were.”

“When did you realize it had been me the whole time?” Ben asked, lowering his knees and leaning forward. He crossed his long legs, leaning his elbows on his thighs and watching Jonas’s profile. The poor kid had ended up with his nose after all.

“I don’t know. I think after all that time on Athiktos, your Force signature is so natural to me that I just kind of realized it was you. It’s like hearing someone’s voice on a recording and then getting to know them to the point where you can recognize them in your own memory.”

“Too bad you can’t do that for your handsome pickpocket,” Ben said, casually flicking a dried piece of mud off of the cuff of his pants.

A pillow soared across the room and caught him squarely in the face just as he happened to look up in order to catch Jonas’s reaction.


	11. Wings Are Like Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're officially introducing a character from Episode VIII: Temiri Blagg! That's right, everyone! Broom Boy has made an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, my grandma passed away two days ago. We found her later that afternoon. I wasn't 100% about posting, since I started a new job and school and lost my grandma, but I wanted to do SOMETHING productive this week, so I went ahead and grabbed it. 
> 
> Tags at the bottom

**“Wings are like dreams. Before each flight, a bird takes a small jump, a leap of faith, believing that its wings will work. That jump can only be made with rock solid feet.” ― J.R. Rim**

Gida'smoo groaned, lifting her head up off of the ground and blinking up at whoever hit her.

"What was that for?"

"Why were you sneaking around?" a girl about her age stood over her, her light brown hair fixed in several tight knots close to her head.

"I was looking for someone."

"I bet!" A sharp voice said from down the hallway

Gida'smoo's head snapped up as she saw two other boys, all around the same age, approaching her. They had the hallow-eyed, overstretched look Gida'smoo had learned to associate with children born and raised in slavery, particularly those without any parents.

"I'm with the Jedi," Gida'smoo said. She slowly opened her hand and called her lightsaber from her hip and into her hand. She did so, hoping her use of the Force would be enough to prove her identity, rather than enough to get her killed with the heavy bat the sour-faced girl was carrying.

All three of the teenagers lurched backward, their eyes widening. Gida'smoo merely stood and straightened her clothes. She rubbed at her earnodes absently, suddenly reminded of Master Rey's nervous habit of chewing at her thumb, and dropped her hands immediately. She needed to appear warm and comforting, but also casual and confident. She wasn't sure exactly how she would possibly accomplish any of those things, but she had to do it.

"Why would a Jedi come _here_?" the taller of the two boys asked. He had skin the same color as Todra's, and a cap firmly pulled down over his black hair.

"I'm looking for someone," Gida'smoo said.

"Well, they're not here," the other boy, shorter and even darker-skinned than his companion, said shortly.

"You don't know who I'm looking for."

"No one worth looking for is ever _here_. And no one here took anything or did anything, so don't even try!"

Gida'smoo blinked, looking over her shoulder at the girl. She was an incredibly interesting person, despite not having the Force. This girl seemingly radiated a fierceness that was barely tamped down with the mere appearance of docility. It was like seeing a rathtar put in a cage. Gida'smoo wondered dimly how many people this girl had already lost to the indecent requests of the uberwealthy clients of the Canto Bight Casinos or even the fathier races themselves. She'd never liked watching fathiers race, but she especially didn't like the likelihood that jockeys would be injured or killed in a race if their animal fell.

"I'm looking for someone who is in this stable- this prep area, right now," Gida'smoo explained, "if that's not one of the workers, then that's fine, but I sensed them in the Force and I know they're that way," she pointed between the heads of the two boys, back down the tunnel and deeper into the area where these children had probably been Forced to spend their entire lives.

"What do you want them for?" the boy with the hat asked.

Gida'smoo chewed her lip, thinking for a moment. Part of her, the part that sounded like Finn and Poe, said she should just disable these three, run down the hallway, and try to find this Force user herself and leave immediately. That would reduce the chances of running into trouble, well, at least not trouble that she didn't already cause or know about, but it would also save time and allow her to get to the next planet.

The voice inside her that sounded like Rey seemed to murmur, much more gently, _"how long has it been that these three have had any hope for their future?"_.

"You have a Jedi, a future Jedi, in there somewhere," Gida'smoo said seriously.

All three of them laughed incredulously. Gida'smoo exhaled through her nose as they writhed in various stages of mirth. One of them, the dark boy without a hat, leaned against a wall, exhaling and trying to catch his breath after he'd been Forced to more or less curl up in the fetal position by his own giggles.

"I'm serious," Gida'msoo said softly.

"You're insane." The girl said, shaking her head. Her posture, however, was relaxed now, so that was progress, "we'd know if there was a Jedi in there."

"They're not a Jedi YET, forgive me," Gida'smoo amended, "with training and hard work, they can become a Jedi as good as any of the Old Republic."

"And why would they risk everything to follow some-"

A new voice, authoritative despite its calm, cut across whatever inside the hat boy was about to utter: "what's going on?" Gida'smoo turned, her heart jumping into her throat. She'd been so distracted by trying to get past the three guards that she hadn't realized that her quarry was walking over anyway.

"Tem, this twi'lek says she's a Jedi!" the girl said. Her tone instantly became whining, and Gida'smoo felt a sudden urge to punch her, not for actually being the one to bowl her over and slam her into the ground, but rather for that insincere tone of voice. From what she could see of the look he shot at the boy with the hat, this leader shared her annoyance.

"She's not a Jedi," "Tem" said soothingly. He walked over to Gida'smoo and looked down at her. He put out a hand and smiled, revealing hands that were scarred from years of very long and very difficult labor, but teeth that were all present and accounted for, "I'm Tem. Temiri Blagg."

"I'm Gida'smoo, Knight of the New Jedi Order," Gida said, shaking his hand and watching his face.

"You're really serious about this, aren't you?" Temiri said, raising an eyebrow as Gida'smoo let go of his hand and lowered her own stance.

"I've been working towards it since I was 12. After 10 years, it either becomes absolutely nonsensical or it becomes all-encompassing."

"And which is that?" Temiri asked.

"Ugh, Tem," the black boy shook his head and turned away, shaking his head in utter emotional defeat.

Gida'smoo smiled despite herself. This newest kid was charming and, from what she could tell, was the leader of the group.

When she finally paid attention, however, she realized he was more than that.

He was the person that she was looking for.

"It's you," Gida'smoo whispered.

"Huh?" the boy looked from Gida'smoo to the girl with knotted hair and back, "I'm sorry?"

"She thinks you're a Jedi," the girl said, pursing her lips and rolling her eyes.

The boy with the hat raised a finger, "well, she did say she thinks you're a future Jedi, but still."

"I'm sorry," the Force-sensitive teen, Temiri, if she remembered correctly, said, "I don't know if Erisi hit you too hard or what, but I'm not a Jedi."

"Not yet, I think," Gida'smoo said. She turned her back on the knot-haired girl and faced the boys, her eyes fixed on Temiri, "but you can do things the others can't, can't you? You know things that no one should be able to know. You've done things that you shouldn't be able to do."

Temiri's eyes cut from Gida'smoo's face to Erisi, but he didn't say anything.

"I don't know what it is for you, but you've done something downright impossible, haven't you? There's been a moment where you caught something uncatchable, survived an unsurvivable fall, made something _happen_ that you wanted to, or known something instinctively that you couldn't know, but you've done it," Gida'smoo said.

For her, it had been a trinket she'd caught from across the room. She'd been living on Ryloth with her parents, shortly before her father's first bid for Galactic Senate, and there had been an earthquake. An heirloom from her long-dead grandmother, a delicate figure of a twi-lek woman dancing, had tumbled from the top shelf where it normally sat safely. She'd put out her hands to catch it, half throwing herself off the bed, but had known it wouldn't be enough.  
At least, until she realized the figurine was safely in her hands.

Before she'd had time to feel anything more than shock, her mother was throwing open her door and pulling her into the doorway and away from the other falling books and toys. That figurine was what led to her becoming a Jedi. When she'd told her parents about it, they'd reached out to Leia Organa, who had spoken to Luke.

Temiri met Gida'smoo's eyes finally and said, "it doesn't mean I'm a Jedi."

"You won't be a Jedi until you're done training."

"I don't want to train."

"Why not?"

"Because the Jedi aren't- they're not- they're not real."

"I'm proof enough that they're real," Gida'smoo said, cutting her eyes from Temiri to the boy in the hat, who was staring at Temiri like he'd grown a second head.

"No, I mean that the Jedi don't do anything," Temiri said, shaking his head, "they don't help anyone."

"They do!" Gida'smoo said, frowning.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

"Then why is it that Cantonica can get slaves from anywhere in the Galaxy? Even from the inner worlds, the rich planets? If the Jedi were doing anything useful, then why aren't they helping the worst off, huh?"

Gida'smoo sighed, "Temiri, I get it."

"I don't think you-"

"I'm a Twi'lek born on Ryloth, you think I don't know all about trafficking and the slave trade?" Gida'smoo snapped suddenly. She'd grown up the daughter of upper-class diplomats, but even she had been trained from a young age how to protect herself from smugglers, kidnappers, and pimps. Thanks to the pillaging of Ryloth during the days of the Empire and well into the decades afterwards, there were as many twi'leks off of Ryloth as there were on it, but half of the twi'lek women off of their home planet were somehow involved with sex work or the slave trade.

A slave from a place like Canto Bight would know this all too well. There was a reason humans were kept in the stables and the twi'leks were kept in the casino.

Two of Gida'smoo's childhood friends had been taken already. Since so many twi'leks were out in the galaxy or living on other planets, girls "from the Source" fetched a premium, especially in Hutt space.

"I'm sorry," Temiri said, glancing away. His cheeks turned the same ruddy color that Jonas's always did when he was embarrassed, although he had obviously tanned more.

"There's only three fully trained Jedi in the whole galaxy right now that we know of," Gida'smoo said, "As much as it kills me- And it _kills_ me- we can't right the wrongs of the whole galaxy. We can't. It's already taking all we have to fight back against the First Order. They won't even pretend to outlaw the slave trade - and you know it. It'll be like the old days under the Galactic Empire all over again."

Temiri frowned. He glanced over Gida'smoo's shoulder again. Gida'smoo could practically feel the girl behind her shake her head, "I can't go. I'm in charge. I'm the oldest."

"Can I at least test you for midichlorians?" Gida'smoo asked.

“That’s not going to do anything,” Temiri said flatly.

Gida’smoo exhaled, “Maybe not, but it would be nice to know what your count is, in case you ever come to us down the road.”

“Tem, you can’t. You don’t know what she’s actually doing!” Erisi said from behind Gida’smoo.

Gida resisted the urge to roll her eyes, pulling the stylus-sized blood tester kit from her bag and holding it up, “The test is basically instantaneous. All I need is a few drops of blood and I'll be able to connect it with the computer on my ship. you'll have the results back before you could even finish saddling one of those things.”

Temiri looked from Gida’smoo to the blood test to Erisi and back. His gaze gave nothing away, but his Force signature was a bright array of confusion and uncertainty and worry. Finally, he said, “Let’s see what she has to say, Erisi.”

“I don’t like this,” Erisi growled. Gida’smoo glanced over her shoulder as the girl stomped back to the doorways and peered out of the gates to check for anyone.

“I know,” Temiri said, sighing.

Gida'smoo stepped forward. She pulled the kit out of her bag as well. She pulled a cleaning cloth from inside the kit, wiping his hand clean. She pinched his middle finger, drawing blood closer. She put the tester against his finger before pressing the test button. The test whirred, puncturing the tip of his finger and extracting several drops of blood.

Temiri exhaled slightly at the pain, but otherwise, his face was impassive. The test chimed brightly as it drew enough blood to get a clear result. When Gida'smoo drew the stylus away, she rested the cleaning cloth against his finger, "Just hold this there for a moment."

Gida’smoo glanced up at Temiri’s face, “See? Not so bad.”

The boy with the hat cleared his throat behind her, taking a tentative step forward, “Excuse me, Miss Jedi?”

Gida’smoo put the cap back on the test, clicking the clearance button and rotating both the tiny needle and the test strip to the sensor portion, “Oh, kriff, just call me Gida’smoo. “Miss Jedi” makes me sound so old.”  
“Okay. Gida’smoo. Could you- I mean- I-” the boy’s face was reddening all the way up under the bill of his cap.

“I could test you, too, if you want,” Gida’smoo offered.

The boy in the hat immediately perked up, “Really?”

“I’ll test anyone who wants it.”

“Even me?” A voice piped up from out of nowhere. Gida’smoo turned around, then spotted a small face peeking out from over one of the stall doors.

“Me, too?!” Three faces peered around the hallway corner.

Temiri tipped his face up and sighed, “Kriff, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay! I’ll test anyone who wants it. Is there some place I can sit and just have everyone line up?”

Temiri looked from her to the over-excited trio who were already racing, giggling, down the hallway. He signed indulgently, “Yeah, through here.”

"How many kids are living here?" Gida'smoo asked.

"Why do you say "kids"?" Temiri asked, raising an eyebrow as the other two boys fell into step behind them.

"No offense, but I didn't think you'd be the one in charge if there were a bunch of adults running around,' Gida'smoo said.

Temiri smirked, "Good answer, actually. Yeah, I'm the oldest one here. There used to be some older kids, but not for a while. Me and Erisi have been here the longest. I think the casino realized having someone who's been with the fathiers their whole life is useful, even if we can't be jockeys at this age."

"Too old?"

"Too tall."

"Got it," Gida'smoo said. She looked around as Temiri led her further into the stables. From what she could see, it was almost like being inside of an old mine. The tunnels were big enough to walk through, framed on either side by stalls with gates that were as tall as she was. There seemed to be several dozen fathiers, deeper and deeper into the stables.

"And they all race?" Gida'smoo said, looking at one large one in particular, whose eyes and nose were framed with white.

"Not him, no," Temiri said, "Gavten's a stud. One of the most famous racers, though. There's probably near sixty adults here, but only forty of them are racing age or condition. We've got several studs and the rest are all mothers."

"Woah," Gida'smoo said, eyes wide.

Temiri nodded, "Yeah. They're our lives. It's funny, the riders live in housing elsewhere, but the grooms and stablehands, we know them the best of anyone."

"I bet," Gida'smoo said. She smiled as a particularly long-eared one stood up on its hind legs and put its front feet over the stable door, squeaking happily as Temiri approached.

Temiri snorted, "That's Gavten II. He's going to be fast, but he's also a big baby." He stood on his toes, reaching up to rub under the fathier's chin.

"You really love them. All of them," Gida'smoo said.

"Yeah," Temiri whispered. He shooed young Gavten II back inside his stall, then turned to face Gida'smoo, “I don't want that test to be positive, Gida'smoo. I'll be honest. They need me. All of them. I'm the only one the bosses possibly listen to."

"I can't imagine."  


Temiri nodded stiffly, "Living quarters are through here," he said after a moment, pointing down a low doorway into what Gida'smoo expected to be a supply room.  


Instead, it turned out to be the living quarters of around thirty different stablehands. Most of them were small, somewhere between the ages of four and ten, but they were all camped on piles of blankets, mattresses that were obviously handmade, or else hanging from haphazardly rigged hammocks.  


"Woah," Gida'smoo said, "You all made this, didn't you?"  


"Oh, yeah," Temiri said, snorting, "You think the stuffed suits up the hill were going to do anything? They expanded further underground, building more supply rooms, bigger stalls and all that, about ten years ago. That's around the time they figured out that breeding good racers was cheaper than trying to catch the best ones wild."  


"Sounds exactly like a stuffed suit," Gida'smoo murmured, thinking back the distinct lack of metal she'd seen outside of the main gates, "So how do they get out for a race?"  


"We put the racers in the old stalls ahead of time, but they move here at night. There's more room, they're easier to manage, and they run better when you do that."  


"I'm guessing you told them this?" Gida'smoo asked, raising an eyebrow.  


Temiri shook his head, "They wouldn't have listened to me. They brought in some animal expert after one of their animals was nearly whipped to death in the middle of the race. He just sat down in the middle of the track and wouldn't get up."  


"Force," Gida'smoo whispered, shaking her head.  


"After a while, it went from being just three of us to twenty-six," Temiri said, waving a hand to the assembled kids.  


"This is incredible," Gida'smoo murmured, "Temiri, you- you all really _built_ something."  


Temiri nodded, then glanced down at the testing stylus in her hand. There was an unspoken _"and that thing in your hand could destroy it"_ that hung, heavy and sour, in the air between them. Gida'smoo looked down at the tester for a long time, full of a sudden and vicious urge to smash it under her boot.  


But, she couldn't.  


The Galaxy mattered more than the comforts and unity among a little enclave of slave children in the middle of nowhere, sadly.  


"Come on," Temiri whispered, "We have one real chair, and you get to use it."  


"I'm honored."  


"You should be. Now, since I _already know_ that Olujimi, Lulit, and Masha have already told all of you about who is with me and what she's here for," Temiri said. The children all giggled, clustering around Gida'smoo and the rickety old "real chair". Gida'smoo smiled, settling into place.  


These kids were incredibly strong, Gida'smoo realized. She told them each to memorize their number, so she could tell them their results, cleaned their hands and tested thirty children for midichlorian counts. They were all bright-eyed despite their difficult lives, and content with being shepherded around by the four older kids, all of whom were tested themselves - even Erisi.  


"Your tests are done, by the way," Gida'smoo said, pulling her handheld holo from inside her pocket. It had been ready before they even reached the supply room, but he'd settled down enough to be ready to hear the news.  


"Okay," Temiri said, squaring his shoulders.  


"You have 11,000 midichlorians per cell. This puts you above the average of the Jedi of the old order," Gida'smoo said softly, looking up at Temiri.  


Temiri nodded, turning away, "Okay, who's next?"  


The boy in the hat, Caellach Adit, had 9,000. Adeen Ivka wasn't far behind him.  


Gida'smoo was shocked so many of these kids tested so highly. One of the smallest girls, named Buhle Sarli, had a count of 7,750. She reminded Gida'smoo of Saani, especially when she bounced up and down on her feet after being told she could go train to be a Jedi. The last two, Esen and Umaru, were around twelve and were the last ones above the 6,500 count cut-off. Rey and Finn had decided that they didn't want to invite people who wouldn't be able to train beyond a basic level, but they also wanted to include those who were below the old threshold of 7,000 that the Jedi of the Old Republic had kept.  


They all wanted to go and train, even Temiri, and they gathered the few personal belongings that they had. Any practical supplies would be left, but mostly, they could spend another hour or so with their friends, saying goodbye.  
Erisi, now the oldest of the group, sat with her head on Temiri's shoulder, tears in her eyes. Gida'smoo gave them the privacy they deserved as Temiri turned his head and pressed a light kiss to Erisi's hair. Not only was Erisi going to have to face the consequences of leadership now, but she was also losing her oldest friend.  


Gida'smoo contented herself with listening to Buhle and another kid around that age tell her stories about races, and what the jockeys were like and how they'd gotten to be stablehands. From what Gida could tell, most of the children were orphaned, abandoned on another planet and brought here for work, or had been sold to cover debts of some kind. Some were lucky enough to remember their names or their parents' names or their home planet. If they were ever able to leave, they might have a chance to find relatives somewhere. Buhle and her friend, Zorika, however, were not as fortunate. They'd been named by the bosses when they'd been found, alone, in a slum elsewhere on Cantonica.  


Despite all of this, though, these three dozen or so children had all managed to find a way to survive, bond, and better themselves here. They'd all learned and taught each other to read basic. They found ways to pay for better food, mostly by placing very quiet, low-value bets that wouldn't get noticed. They looked out for each other and kept each other alive.  


When Temiri had been little Buhle's age, the life expectancy of a stablehand was fourteen.  


Now, Temiri was twenty-two and all of the others would be capable of reaching that age.  


Gida'smoo guessed she'd have to pay through the nose to cover the ‘contracts' of the six she was taking with her. They always called them contracts, but Gida'smoo had seen enough of them to know they were just writs of slavery. Still, she could cover the cost, which would leave at least her six free for the rest of their lives.  


If she could afford to, she'd do it for all of them, but not even her family had that kind of money.  


She had promised her six new Younglings that she would make sure they ended up in front of every Galactic Senate committee involved with commerce, health, or crime. She'd get them meetings with every Senator that she possibly could. She wasn't going to rescue them from this kind of life only to forget about their loved ones.  


One of the fathiers let out a high keening noise.  


Immediately, the warmth was sucked out of the room. Every one of the kids stood up. Temiri and the boy in the hat raced to the door, on the heels of Erisi, who had her club in hand.  


"What is it?" Gida'smoo hissed.  


The minute the words left her mouth, she felt it.  


Dark Force signatures- and definitely signatures, _plural_ were nearby. Gida'smoo grabbed her lightsaber and scrambled after the other three. They were probably expecting common thieves, but they were walking towards something far, far worse.  


Gida’smoo put out a hand, hoping the knights were one of the half that couldn’t use the Force, and slammed them into the back the best she could without actually looking at them.  


“What-?!” Erisi shouted.  


“Stop!” Gida’smoo squeaked, carefully stepping forward as she dragged the three knights of Ren forward, pushing them into the ground. She noticed one of the masks with a distinctive ridge on top of the head. It was Laa Ren, a Force-sensitive knight that she recognized, “They’re Knights of Ren. First Order!”  


“Oh Kriff,” Temiri said, throwing his arms out and backing up, forcing the others behind him, “What do we do?”  


Gida'smoo turned over her shoulder, her heart immediately dropping into her stomach. There were thirty kids behind her, and she had no idea how long she could hold the three knights, especially since one of them was already shoving back against her shield in earnest.  


There were Knights of Ren _here_. They _had_ managed to cloak themselves, at least once they were alone, but, from what she could tell, there were only three of them. She resisted the urge to stamp her foot and instead turned back to Temiri, "Get everyone out of here now."  


"We can't leave the fathiers," Temiri said, looking up at the animals.  


"They'll be fine-"  


"No, Gida'smoo, if we leave the fathiers, we'll be punished!" Temiri said.  


Gida'smoo looked around at their little group. She needed to get the fathiers, her new companions, and all of the remaining children out of here without having them get killed by the First Order. Finally, she turned to Temiri,"What happens if the fathiers get onto the track?"  


"What do you mean?"  


"If the fathiers got onto the track at an unusual time, would that raise alarm bells?"  


"Kriff yeah."  


"Good, then that's what we're going to do," Gida'smoo said. She turned to the slave children she would have to leave behind, "I need room to escape out of here. Can you take the herd onto the track? It will get the attention of the casino, but hopefully, you can tell them that you were just trying to protect the fathiers from bandits or something." She glanced back at Temiri, "Do you think that would work."  


"It's better than trying to take on Knights of Ren without any weapons or training!" Temiri said. He turned and immediately started opening cages, herding the long-legged creatures a little up the tunnel and out of one of the side exits.  


"How much longer can you hold them?" Temiri asked Gida'smoo.  


One of them was already wiggling in earnest. Gida had a feeling that either they were going to get free, build up some momentum, and be able to get to a blaster enough to shoot her, or they were going to all break free at once. Either way, she needed to buy the slaves as much time as possible, "Two minutes!"  


"Everyone up!" Temiri shouted. The world around her was a blur of brown, dunn and faded yellow as fathiers, both riderless and carrying one or more slave children, rushed over and past the Knights of Ren, pinned like insects under glass.  


Someone burrowed into Gida'smoo's mind suddenly. It felt like someone was driving an ice pick between the halves of her brain, but she contented herself with screaming at her pain and focusing all of her attention- every single ounce of will that she could muster- into holding them still.  


"Tell me when the others are gone!" Gida'smoo choked out.  


More russet shapes bounded past. Gida'smoo couldn't tell if time was slowing, if the fathiers were longer than she thought they were, or if there was just an endless supply of them. For what felt like several long and agonizing years, Gida'smoo held the three Knights of Ren in place while also preventing the total collapse of her psyche. All noise was thudding and thundering feet, but it sounded far away, like when she'd burrow in her mother's room with a good book while some thunderstorm or another raged on. Her mama would always say that thunder wasn't a time for fear. It was a time for tea and books and quiet contemplation.  


Another noise, higher than the pounding of feet and the mottled low of fathier rang out, but Gida'smoo couldn't make it out through the thick film that seemed to have settled on her earnodes.  


A hand touched her arm, and the noise came rushing back into sharp relief.  


"They're gone, we can go! The rest of the herd will cover us!"  


Gida'smoo turned, grabbing Temiri's hand and racing back up the tunnels. She needed the cover from the animals, but she also hoped the Knights might think they'd taken a side exit. Temiri said something about a back entrance under the casino itself, in case of a cave-in. Well, now they needed that.  


Her arms ached where she'd been holding them in place, partially using her own physicality to fuel her shield over the Knights of Ren. Her legs burned from all of the walking she'd done already, much less the running. Her head absolutely screamed with pain, and the assault on her senses continued.  


Behind her, she felt one of the Knights of Ren get up.  


Gida'smoo raced back up the tunnel, holding onto Temiri with one hand. He was holding onto someone else's, and all the way down the line. Behind her, she could hear the dying screams of the fathier that met with whatever sinister weapons were being wielded by Snoke's right hand.  


_Don't think. Run. Don't feel guilty. Run._ Gida'smoo desperately thought. She and Temiri raced deeper and deeper into the tunnels, which were losing light more and more as they went. They twisted and turned in earnest, never intersecting, but constantly doubling back almost on themselves.  


_Please let this buy us time. Please, we need time_ Gida'smoo thought desperately, reaching into the Force itself and holding that someone, anyone, was listening.  
The day Luke had died, she'd been anxious, but excited for battle. She'd been surrounded by capable warriors who she was willing to die beside. These, however, were children. She didn't want to lose them. If they died it would be her failure, her mistakes.  


_Not today, Gida'smoo,_ a voice, soothing and thoughtful and totally unfamiliar to her, echoed in her mind, _Trust the Force._

Gida'smoo heard a massive collision behind her. Her stomach dropped into her feet, but she kept racing down the tunnel. Someone behind her was crying, but she couldn't stop, couldn't slow, even as her heart twisted. The Knights had figured some of the tunnels wove back, and were trying to go sideways to either get where they were or block them off.

Racing past old scaffolding, Gida'smoo thought of her dream. She remembered, vividly, the beauty and the hope that had surrounded her as Luke had called the galaxy closer to her, showing her Dorne, a Wookie who was to be her padawan.  
_If she's supposed to be mine, then I can't die here,_ Gida'smoo thought fiercely.  


"I will not die here," Gida'smoo snarled.  


A red light suddenly glowed from down the tunnel, and Temiri let out the foulest and well-fitting curses Gida'smoo had ever heard. She drew her lightsaber, still leading them towards what she hoped was some kind of service light.  


Gida'smoo's heart clenched as she thought again of the dream Luke had shown her. Of the dream Luke had HAD of a galaxy that once again could feel and use the Force freely.  


Ahead of her, a series of half-walls- little shelved alcoves for supplies, most likely- was a tiny glimmer of something. Gida'smoo, even though she was running towards certain death, glanced at it.  


It was blue.  


It was blue and vibrant and identical to the lights that marked the Force consciousness of the dream.  


Trust the Force, the voice had said.  


"Everyone, hang on!" Gida'smoo said. She turned, just slightly, and reached for the light.

The second the tip of her longest finger made contact, Gida'smoo of the Jedi was suddenly sucked into a Somewhere else. She screamed and was immediately grateful there was an air of some kind to breathe. She was rocketing through the crease of some kind of fold. On her left, bright whiteness, punctuated by indistinguishable fragments of color or darkness or anything else, passed by her. It was as if she was in a hyperspace lane with gaps of some kind in the outer area.  
On her right, however, was pure and starless blackness. That scared her even more.  


Whatever was on either side of her, Gida'smoo was being propelled through some kind of space between them. Well, not between them exactly because below her feet the two halves met and seemed to do the same at some point over her head, but a long, thin pocket in space? Cantonica? The Force itself? was the best mental picture she had.

Behind her, Gida'smoo could hear the tense, shallow breaths of those with her. Temiri's grip on her wrist was like iron and she was eternally grateful for it.

On her left, images came together in earnest now, sharper reliefs that she could actually perceive.

_A bickering pair of broad-shouldered and tusked sentients argued loudly on a street._

_A farmer knelt to inspect a leaf, surrounded by an endless array of green._

_A young woman cried on her bed, a scrap of fabric clutched in one hand._

_Two friends sat and talked over a large steaming bowl._

__There were species she recognized, even planets she'd been to or seen pictures of.__

__The Star where Starkiller Base had once been.__

__The ruined surface of Jedha__

__The high northeastern hills of Ryloth__

__Corellia, its skies full of pilots.__

__Coruscant.__

Hundreds of scenes from Coruscant all seemed to overlap at once, flashing in the bright to her left for only a moment before disappearing. Gida'smoo realized that she needed to act. She needed to do SOMETHING or they would never leave here. She didn't know how long they could survive in this space, but watching the galaxy flash by her for eternity sounded like death itself, in a way.

__Master Rey.__

__Master Rey!__

With strength Gida'smoo couldn't explain, she called to her master, casting her mind into the white. It filled her, flooding every memory, every thought, every sensation until only two things remained.

_Bright white._

_And Master Rey._

Then, the white receded, only for a moment, and Gida'smoo saw Rey, standing in Otica'smoo's office in the Senate. Half-blind and shuddering in agony, Gida'smoo put out a free hand, touching the image suspended in the brightness.

The world came back with a vengeance.

Gida'smoo rushed into her father's office at full speed. She was so dazed she couldn't even break herself and only had enough wherewithal to let go of Temiri, bring up her hands, and catch herself against a wall before she ran face-first into it.

The others mostly tumbled over each other or into furniture, crying and shaking, but, when she turned around, they were all alive and accounted for.  


"Gida'smoo!" Otica'smoo looked around. He stepped forward, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her close.  


"Holo!" Gida'smoo choked out, putting a hand out, "I need a holo. Now!"  


Rey, mouth open, pulled a holo out of her pocket. She held it out to Gida, who immediately typed in Gale's number.  


"Master Jedi?" Gale's voice sounded clear, sharp, and unbothered, which was a relief.  


"Leave now," Gida'smoo said clearly.  


"Gida- how do you have Master Rey's holo?!"  


"I don't have time to explain! Just listen! Take everyone, except me, and get off Cantonica right now. There are Knights of Ren nearby."  


"What about you?! Gida'smoo, I won't-"  


"I'm safe! I can't explain, but I'm on Corsucant. I'll tell you later, when you get here, but I'm safe."  


There was a beat, only a heartbeat's hesitation before Gale said, "Yes, Jedi Gida'smoo." He hung up the holo and Gida'smoo immediately burst into tears.  


Strong arms wrapped around her as she held the holo against her cheek, trembling as all of the strength seemed to leave her body. The clarity she'd had just a second before to get a holo and get Gale and her crew out of danger, was gone. Now the world was just a swirling mess.  


"Gida, are you alright? Are you hurt?" Master Rey's voice was warm against the skin over her ear nodes.  


"I'm okay," Gida'smoo choked out. She leaned against her father's chest, not even caring about wrinkles or stains, "I- I don't know what happened. I met Temiri and we had a group and we were getting ready to leave when three Knights showed up."  


"Was anyone hurt?"  


"N-no,” Gida'smoo said. She wiped her nose with her sleeve, not even caring how undignified it was, but the tears kept coming. Someone placed a handkerchief in her hand, which she accepted gratefully, "I held them down, all three of them, but then we had to run. I saw one of the lights from my vision of Luke and, when I touched it, I was sucked into this place."  


"To Coruscant?"  


"No, this awful place in between. It was all white to our left with flashes of moments from across the galaxy, but to our right, it was all black. There was nothing. There weren't even stars. Then, I saw you here, and I reached out to you and then I ended up here!"  


"Oh, Gida," Rey said. She rubbed Gida'smoo's back, "Don't worry, don't worry. We'll talk about this all later, I promise."  


Gida'smoo nodded, burying her face in her father's shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested animal injury/death  
> Referenced child abuse, neglect, kidnapping, and slavery  
> Children raising other children  
> References to twi'lek fetish and sexual slavery  
> A blood-drawing apparatus is used. No strong detail.  
> Discussions of slavery, the slave trade, and ineffective government intervention


	12. Every Man is Trying to Live Up to His Father's Expectations or Make Up For Their Father's Mistakes

**“Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes....” ― Barack Obama, _The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream_**

"Do you sense him?" 

Ben turned on his heel ahead of Jonas, toying with the seam of his pocket. There was a knife hidden there in a secret sheath. It wouldn't be as fast as a lightsaber, but that would be the fastest way to broadcast their identities.

The Galaxy didn't know what Kylo Ren's face looked like, but Jonas didn't doubt for a single second that everyone could recognize The Red Cross on sight. 

Jonas, luckily, was less well known, and no one knew he was wielding two lightsabers, but he didn't feel like undergoing that kind of scrutiny. Option 1) he was recognized and everyone thought Kylo Ren had either kidnapped or brainwashed him. This would send the entire galaxy after them, ruin their ability to hide, and Force them to go on the run again. Option 2) he wasn't recognized and everyone thought Kylo Ren was roaming Coruscant, alone, with a young darksider padawan. This would send the entire galaxy after them, ruin their ability to hide, and Force them to go on the run again.

The only real difference was whether or not people would shoot to kill him. 

Well, more accurately, _which_ people would shoot to kill him. 

"This thing he does where he disappears and reappears is starting to get on my nerves," Ben mumbled, stepping further down the alleyway cautiously.

_You and me both,_ Jonas thought bitterly. It was difficult enough just trying to exist on the run, but when potential allies kept disappearing into thin air, it made things much more complicated. 

Something tickled the back of Jonas's mind at that thought, but he didn't press on it too much. He had enough to worry about here without trying to keep track of some vague and off-topic recollection. 

"Let's see what kind of criminal he is," Ben muttered under his breath, turning to look over their shoulders one more time.

"Huh?"

Ben didn’t acknowledge Jonas, his words so quiet that Jonas could barely hear them, "he always said there were two strategies when it came to dealing with people you didn't trust. You show up late after making them wait _just long enough_ to be a little annoyed and therefore off their game. Or-"

Someone crouched behind a dumpster a few yards ahead of them. Ben whirled around and spoke in a louder voice, "or you show up early enough that they have no hope of getting comfortable with the environment." 

"You're La Kai?" Ta'el stepped out from behind a dumpster. He looked perfectly impassive, not even looking Ben up and down or visibly sizing him up. Jonas had seen many different people do so since they started travelling together. Even comfortably into his forties with some visible streaks of gray in his black hair, Ben cut an impressive figure that held people’s attention. 

"Who's asking?" Ben asked back, looking down at Ta'el, his face an expressionless mask.

Ta'el looked from Ben to past him at Jonas. He raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly, but said nothing until he glanced back at Ben. He was careful and had a good Sabacc face, but he was practically shouting his emotions in the Force. He didn't shout his thoughts, but emotions were harder to hide, even for experienced Force users.

"I'm Ta'el, but Darren already told you that," Ta'el said, looking at Ben without any visible sign of nervousness of the uncertainty Jonas could tell he felt. When he turned, his vibrant blue eyes caught the light. When they did, the irises seemed to turn silver. Just as the thought appeared in his mind, he felt a sudden threat of amusement that didn't feel like him. It was then that he realized that Ben had tethered their two minds and he hadn't noticed it. Now, his admiration of Ta'el's impossible eyes had basically been broadcast directly into his father's mind. 

“Darren said he thinks you have the Force,” Ben said, looking Ta’el up and down, “What do you think?”

“I think I do.”

“Why?” Ben crossed his arms and tilted his head, watching the dark olive-skinned youth carefully.

“Because you’re here. If I didn’t, then he either would have shown up to my house because he could track me down, or he never would have come because he couldn’t hear my thoughts in the first place,” Ta’el shrugged. 

“Fair point,” Ben said, nodding slowly. 

Suddenly, Ben moved. Jonas took a step back, shocked at the impossible speed that Ben moved with. He didn’t even see Ben grab something from his right pocket, just saw the finished movement of his arm throwing it. 

Something hit Ta’el’s open right palm, four inches from his head, with a loud smack. The youth had caught whatever Ben had thrown at him before Jonas even realized that Ben had actually let go of whatever he was holding. 

“What was that?” Ta’el asked. He grabbed his right wrist in his left hand, looking from his now-red palm to the far wall of the alleyway.

“A test,” Ben said, stepping forward, “I can throw a rock, that one, in particular,” Ben pointed to what Jonas now realized was a small stone that Ta’el had dropped, “for example, to you in a tenth of a second. It takes me another tenth of a second to grab it from my pocket and throw it. Humans have an average reaction time of between a third and half of a second. You couldn’t have caught it, not without warning. Unless you knew where it would be.” 

“You wanted to see if I had magic powers by throwing a _rock_?” Ta’el asked, squinting.

Ben shrugged. 

Jonas stared at the back of Ben’s head, desperately wishing that Ta’el wasn’t there so _he_ could throw a rock at Ben. This entire situation was wildly embarrassing. 

Another flicker of amusement appeared in Jonas’s mind, which made him all the more annoyed. He kept his face blank, looking at Ta’el’s wide-eyed face, but shoved a mental image taken from the memory of one of his mother’s worst “dressing downs” into Ben’s mind, just to make sure Ben knew what he thought of Ben’s methods. 

“You definitely have the Force,” Ben said, stepping forward, “Now, before I agree to train you, I need to make sure you’re not hiding anything from me.”

Ta’el drew his hand to his chest, still massaging his palm. He reminded Jonas vividly of a lothcat trying to size up a larger animal. 

“If I can’t see the inside of your head before we start, then we’re not starting at all,” Ben said flatly.

“You’re not even a Jedi. How do I know you won’t scramble my brain?” Ta’el asked, frowning. 

“You think I would be walking around right now if I destroyed people from the inside like that?” Ben asked, “I doubt the Jedi would let me run around free this long if I set off alarm bells like that.”

Ta’el looked from Ben to Jonas. He said nothing, bright eyes roaming Jonas’s face. Jonas nodded. He needed Ta’el to trust Ben, and he needed Ben to trust Ta’el. There was too much at stake to walk away from someone with evident talent because of some pissing contest. 

At that thought, Jonas saw a tinge of a faint orange-yellow in the corner of his eye. He blinked to clear his gaze, but when he turned his eyes and watched the wall for a heartbeat, the color didn’t budge. He turned his attention back to Ta’el and Ben, who were still sizing each other up. It was only then that he realized he was seeing Ben’s internal laughter. 

Apparently, his dad thought his commentary was hilarious. 

“Fine,” Ta’el finally blurted, “You can do it. If you were inept or untrustworthy, you probably would have cracked open my head by now, right?”

“Easily.”

Ta’el nodded, squaring his shoulders, “Okay. What do I do?”

“Just hold still,” Ben said. His voice was gentle and measured, reminding Jonas of the way he’d spoken when Jonas was rebuilding his lightsabers. For most of his life ,Jonas had wondered how the Knights of Ren could be growing so much faster than the Jedi. Some of the reasons, such as their acceptance of those who could sense the Force but never use it, served as an explanation as well as good old fashioned coercion, but Jonas wondered if part of the explanation was that Ben was a good teacher. He was able to talk people through incredibly complicated mental maneuvers with little effort, even if he still had some slight rage issues underneath. 

He also had a voice made for being an instructor. It was deep, but clear, without any accents that would prove too distracting or unpleasant. 

Ta’el nodded, his back too stiff. 

Ben put out a hand, his face relaxing as he opened his mind to the Force. He let the tip of his middle finger touch Ta’el’s forehead, and the boy gasped. Jonas understood. He’d had his mind opened and rooted through to test its defences. For someone who’d never had it happen, it had to be jarring. Behind him, something moved. Jonas whirled around, staring at the gap in the alley wall. Someone was there. 

Jonas immediately wrapped them in tight bonds with the Force. 

Actually, there were two someones, now that Jonas was interacting with them.

“Over there,” Ben said suddenly, pointing to the wood-panelled fence between the alleyway and whatever was beyond, “Someone is there. He has someone waiting there.” 

Ta’el grunted, his eyes snapping open. Jonas turned to look at him, his jaw tight with frustration. Ta’el didn’t move, however. He stood, too stiff and uncomfortable, held in place by Ben’s powerful grip.

“Who are they?” Jonas asked, eyes on Ben.

“Friends,” Ben said, his fingers still resting barely on Ta’el’s skin, “No, a sister and a friend.”

Jonas growled. He took his left hand and angled his hand, thumb up and open, before driving his four fingers forward. The wood fence crackled open easily, the glue disintegrating under his will. He wished he had his lightsaber, but he would have to settle for unlinking the fence instead. It was slower and would take more work, but he’d grown up practicing how to break locks, sense hiding places, and a thousand other less-than-proper skills. He pulled apart the places where the links were joined at the top, then just bent and yanked at the wires until they came apart and created a large hole. He pulled first one interloper through, then the other, shoving the wood back in place behind them. 

Finally, he turned his attention to the two of them.

One was a girl with skin a shade or two darker than Ta’el, dark braids tangling as she landed flat on her back. The other was a skinny Mirialan boy, his black hair cut close to his head. When he rolled onto his side to look at Jonas better, his deep violet eyes seemed to become almost black with barely-contained fury, although part of Jonas wondered if that was merely due to the contrast between the violet of his eyes and the dull yellow of his skin. 

“I’m gonna guess you’re the sister,” Jonas said flatly, looking at the girl. She glared at him. He’d only given them enough control to move their eyes, so the only recourse she had was to glare at him. 

Which she managed to do astoundingly well. 

“He just brought them here for lookout,” Ben said after a moment, clearly still perusing Ta’el’s mind, “They’re armed, but he wants to be trained, so he didn’t want to blow it by being aggressive. Especially since he thinks his sister has the Force, too.”

The bottom of the sister’s left eye twitched, and Jonas saw the corners of her mouth tense. 

“I don’t think she agrees. And she’s right pissed at Ta’el about getting them into trouble, if I’m guessing,” Jonas said. He looked over at Ta’el, trying to project a sense of confident disinterest that he did not possess. He met Ta’el’s wide-eyed blue eyes, “You’re kriffed, I think, if she gets her hands on you.” 

“He knows,” Ben said, chuckling. Finally, he lowered his hand, stepping back and letting Ta’el step back and grab his head, “You’re all good,” Ben added, almost as an afterthought.

_You really need to practice basic decency more,_ Jonas thought dully. He didn’t let the two at his feet move, glancing from the girl to Ta’el’s doubled-over form and back again.

“He’ll be fine,” Jonas told the girl. 

She just gave him a look that fully communicated her thoughts on him and where he could put his “he’ll be fine”. 

“I’m good, Risha,” Ta’el said, his voice gruff as he straightened up, “I’m fine.”

“You want me to train these two, as well?” Ben asked, gesturing at the girl and the Mirialan on the ground.

“That would be nice.”

“I’m not a charity. I want to see what’s in their heads as much as yours,” Ben said flatly. He looked down at them.

The girl, who Jonas assumed was ‘Risha’, glared at Ben. Her upper lip twitched. Jonas guessed that, if he let her, she’d bare her teeth at him. Jonas smirked, stepping back as Ben crouched down in front of the girl.

“Risha, it’s not that bad,” Ta’el said, walking over to squat down next to Ben, “It’s weird, but it’s not that bad. It’s like having someone else’s finger in your ear.”

Everyone stared at Ta’el for a long moment of incredible stillness and silence. 

Ben exhaled in exasperation, then reached out and touched Risha’s forehead. She stiffened even more, closing her eyes. Her nose wrinkled at the sensation.

Jonas stared at Risha, but then he looked at Ben’s face. His eyes were closed and his expression was relatively impassive, but Jonas saw a little tension between his eyebrows. Either Risha was putting up a fight, or Ben saw something he didn’t like. 

“Let me in,” Ben murmured, “I don’t want to have to Force my way in. It won’t be pleasant.” 

Risha was still frozen. When Jonas looked at her face, he saw there wasn’t any movement anymore. How had she managed to move her mouth and her nose, even a little bit? Now she couldn’t do anything. 

_She’s fighting Ben. She was fighting me before, but now she can’t do both._

Jonas looked at Ta’el, “If she wants to study, we have to trust her.” 

Ta’el nodded, leaning forward and touching Risha’s wrist, “Risha. It’s okay.”

Risha opened her eyes, then turned to look at Ta’el. She held his gaze unblinkingly for several seconds, then closed her eyes. Ben opened his, inhaling a little. He stared at Risha’s forehead, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular, but his eyes were fixed on the air above Risha’s forehead.

After several more tense moments of silence, Ben lowered his hand and leaned back, “She’s clear.” 

Jonas nodded, then looked down at the Mirialan. His face looked particularly sallow and yellow as he looked at Ben. He was the first Mirialan Jonas had never seen with a perfectly clean face. This kid didn’t have a single tattoo, which Jonas found a little startling. 

“Look, kid,” Ben said flatly, looking down at the wide-eyed Mirialan, “just take a deep breath and relax. I can practically hear your thoughts from here and I’m not even trying. I’ll be done in a second.”

The Mirialan’s violet eyes jumped to Ta’el, who nodded slowly, “You’re good, Cozul.” 

Cozul, sighed and closed his eyes. 

Ben stayed standing, but raised his hand, palm open. He kept his eyes open, his hand twitching slightly at one point, but otherwise nothing stood out. Searching through Cozul’s thoughts was the fastest of the three by far. He lowered his hand, then shrugged at Jonas. 

“They’re all good,” Ben said.

Jonas nodded, breaking the tight bonds on Risha and Cozul. They immediately groaned. Risha tried to stand up, but nearly stumbled. Jonas winced. He should have made sure Risha and Cozul weren’t resting on their own feet, but he’d forgotten. 

Cozul didn’t even bother trying to get up. Instead, he just winced and groaned, kicking his feet out from under him and trying to stretch his legs rather than trying to use them right away. 

“Sorry,” Jonas muttered. 

Risha tossed her braids over her shoulder, looking between Ben and Jonas, “So what’s the story here?”

“I’m La Kai and this is Darren. The Force runs in our family. We know how to use it, and I’ll teach you,” Ben said shrugging. 

“Where have you been all this time? Ta’el said he only saw you recently,” Risha said. 

“Everywhere,” Le Kai said, shrugging, “We like to keep moving. It’s safer.”

“Why Coruscant?” Risha asked, putting one hand on her hip. 

“Credits,” Ben said, shrugging. 

“Can’t argue with that,” Ta’el said, shrugging. 

“These two would work in the factories if that one hadn’t gone and pissed off Krasimir and got all of the Tagos,” Risha pointed to Cozul, “Now both of them have been blacklisted, more or less.”

“How do you get along? How do you afford anything?” Jonas asked.

“I steal,” Ta’el said, “Hence how we met. They don’t want us dead, which is good, but no one will hire us.”

“Protection racket, I’m guessing?” Ben asked, nodding slowly and crossing his arms. 

“Yep,” Ta’el said, sighing, “The three of us have been out of work since then. We were almost off Coruscant, too, or maybe up to an upper level, but now…” he trailed off and shrugged, “unless we went up on an indenture ship or some rich distant relative decides to die and claim us, we have nothing.” 

“Not anymore,” Ben said. He reached into his pocket again, drawing out one of the cheapest communicators Jonas had ever seen. 

“There’s one number programmed into it,” Ben said, he pulled another communicator out, “this one.”

“That’s why you needed to search our heads,” Cozul said, looking between the communicators. 

Ben nodded, “I’m not going to expose myself and my son to anything dangerous without good reason.” 

Ta’el and Risha looked at each other, then nodded.

“We get it,” Risha said.

“So, you’ve decided to train us. Now what?” Ta’el asked, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Now? We all go get some rest. You take this with you and wait for my message,” Ben said. He passed the communicator to Ta’el, “Now, get out of here.” 

Jonas looked at Ben, but then he saw a gruff amusement on Ben’s face that seemed to fit there, even if he didn’t know how exactly it did. Distantly, he wondered what Ben would have been like as a dad. How would he have responded to skinned knees and nightmares and all of the other things that came with small children. 

As Ta’el and Risha walked down one end of the alleyway, pulling their hoods up as they went, Jonas wondered what _he_ would have been like if he’d known Ben since birth. Would he be more serious? More focused? Would he have that undercurrent of tension and power that Ben seemed to radiate? 

Cozul waited a minute before making his own way out of the alley, crossing the street immediately and walking in the opposite direction that Ta’el and Risha had taken before disappearing. 

As Ben turned to face him, Jonas suddenly had the vivid image of a life where his mother hadn't left the First Order. He looked into the dark eyes that had become familiar and comforting to him over the past four months. Those dark eyes were the only thing that separated the two of them, in terms of looks. That, and the thin white scar that cut across his forehead, narrowly missing Ben's right eye before ending at his right jaw. Ben jerked his head to the alleyway and Jonas followed him, hands in his pockets and his mind full of a thousand and one different possibilities.

_What would things have been like if he'd been born into The First Order?_

They wouldn't be here, hiding in an alleyway on Coruscant. That was certain. Ben wouldn't be "Ben", to him, but he might not have even been a real dad, either. He'd used the Dark side once, by accident, calling on the Force in a fit of frustration when he'd been losing yet another bout with Gida'smoo. Rey had been furious, but even more than that, she'd been afraid. 

Jonas could remember the way the room had turned cold and tenuous around him the moment he'd touched the Dark side for the first time. It hadn't been purposeful, perhaps, but it had been obvious. 

What would it have been like to grow up wrapped in the Dark side from birth? With Snoke and the Knights of Ren around him. He would have had more training from a younger age, for certain. The Knights of Ren apparently underwent an incredibly rigorous and intensive training regimen, which helped explain how they had managed to grow at such a pace for his entire life. 

Luke's plan had been for him and Gida'smoo to finish their training, and then each search out and take on padawans of their own. From there, if Rey wanted, she would take on another student or two. Finn was about to begin training his daughters, and Luke had privately told Jonas that he thought he might have the energy for one last student. The hope had been to bring the number of trained Jedi from five to twelve within a decade, perhaps more.

In the meantime, the Knights of Ren had recruited, coerced, kidnapped, and trained almost thirty people of varying Force abilities on top of the thirty that had existed when he was born. At the same time, they'd lost many knights and trainees, which didn't help anything. 

As Ben led the way down a side alley, Jonas wondered if he would have survived this long if he'd grown with the Dark side. 

"What do you think?" Ben asked, turning back towards their apartment.

"Huh?" 

"What do you think of the three of them?"

"I think Risha's the most powerful of the three, hands down," Jonas said. 

"Why?" Ben's voice was measured.

Jonas frowned, looking at Ben as they walked, "She was the only one who could move her face." How had Ben missed that? Shouldn't he have felt the difference between her mind and the others? 

"I'm glad you noticed that," Ben said. He raised his eyebrows at Jonas's shock as they turned onto their street, "I'm still training you, kid. You think the work had stopped just because we were here?"

"I..." Jonas trailed off. He blinked, stopping and staring off into space. He looked after Ben, then shook his head, “What?”

Ben chuckled, “Come on, kid. Let’s get inside.”

*****

Akela leaned against the wall as Nydo turned slowly on his feet, wielding a training staff that had been fashioned like a traditional lightsaber. Akela couldn't see Nydo under the face of the metal visor that was covering his head, but he was sure Nydo's eyes were shut tightly. Akela was always tempted for several minutes to try and look through the shield rather than focusing on the Force, but Nydo took more naturally to these kinds of training. Akela, meanwhile, seemed to have better luck with sensing the history of items, detecting lies, and delving into memory. 

Ever since he'd encountered Trachiva Ren's face shield, for example, he'd been able to unlock several more memories of the former knight's time with Kylo Ren, and even earlier memories of Trachiva's printing that ze had just associated with the mask in one way or another. Akela was quickly becoming a master at tracking someone using objects they'd handled or grown attached to, and he had turned his mind into a battering ram and a razor-thin wedge that could pry open the thoughts of even knights as experienced as Tirzah Ren.

Nydo, it seemed, was still destined to be the superior warrior, however. 

Tirzah took a step to her left, trying to angle behind Nydo, but he whirled around and attacked.

Akela kept himself from making noise even as the two Knights of Ren that Nydo was sparring moved in. He'd never seen Nydo initiate combat before. His brother was too cautious and thoughtful for that, usually. He always made someone start first, even two someones, when it came to hand-to-hand practice with stormtroopers. Although they hadn't done any of that in recent weeks since they'd been focused entirely on improving their reading, physical therapy, and use of the Force. The only exception was a sleep evaluation they'd done and, from what Akela could tell, that was only because their sleep was being measured on a prearranged schedule that was set by the person running their care.  
Whoever that was. 

Captain Proga seemed to be the main point of contact between the various branches of the First Order, but Akela sincerely doubted that she was the one actually in charge of it all. For one, she didn't have a rank high enough to make it acceptable for her to order Major Phasma around.

Second, there were far, far too many credits going into his and Nydo's recovery for someone less than a General of some kind to be approving, financing, or otherwise overseeing their treatments. Akela didn't really know how much their long-term therapy was costing in terms of credits, but he could tell it was extensive. It didn't help, almost, that his father had been a total loss. He'd never come up with a memory or anyone who had a memory of his father after the accident, but he did know that his father had died of his injuries before even his Knights could reach him and try to use the Force. 

Akela and Nydo had been too untrained to help. Their injuries had only been a little less extensive, so, from what the doctors had said, any taxes on their energy reserves probably would have killed them anyway.

That missed opportunity, from what Akela could tell, drove him and Nydo throughout their training. 

Today, for example, Nydo had somehow managed to hide an intense amount of frustration, anger, and energy. He slapped Tirzah Ren's training staff with his own but didn't stop to gloat, even as he used his slightly superior height to throw her off balance. Instead, he immediately turned around and stepped to his other opponent, a knight whose name that he'd forgotten. 

The knight grunted as the staff hit him just above the knee, slamming a fist into Nydo’s shoulder. The man was one Akela knew as particularly strong, and Akela winced. The punch also reminded him of the man’s name: Morlev Ren. At thirty, he was one of the younger of the established knights, but had also been found and trained at a young age. 

Morlev Ren was a powerful asset, but he threw a wicked punch. Normally, it was enough to unbalance them, but Nydo seemed totally unbothered. Instead, he stepped out from between the two knights, then swept Morlev Ren’s legs from under him. Morlev landed with a grunt and Akela smirked, ready for Nydo to lower his staff and claim the kill. However, he didn't. 

Nydo did someone far more interesting. 

Instead of even just turning to face Tirzah Ren, he stepped backward and shoved her with his shoulder, hard. She was already unbalanced by Morlev Ren’s legs kicking out at her own. That move unbalanced her to the point that she had to use the Force to get herself back up. Tirzah threw her hand out, pushing against the ground with the Force. She managed to keep herself in place and spun on that axis before shoving herself upright. Turning her head and bearing fanged teeth, Tirzah Ren turned to face Nydo.   
The fury in Tirzah Ren’s eyes made Akela’s blood run cold, but Nydo straightened. He took two steps forward, using his slightly increased height and weight to Force Tirzah Ren to either move back or get under his arms. 

She chose the latter, but didn't have anywhere to aim. Nydo's arms were low and tucked to his body, so the only place she could strike was his left bicep. She did so with a vengeance, and the sound of the strike echoed through the room. Akela winced internally. Although the other knights in the room were unhelmeted, they kept their faces mostly impassive, although Akela saw one wince just slightly. Akela had been on the receiving end of a strike like that from Tirzah Ren, and it was highly unpleasant. 

Nydo merely whipped his staff around to meet hers. He Forced her back, however, then did something Akela had never seen him do before: he removed his left hand from his staff and opened his palm. Akela felt the Force suddenly shift within the room. He didn't move, but watched as his brother suddenly widened his stance, swinging his staff savagely with one hand and deflected her blows using the Force and his right hand. He struck her in the stomach with the flat of his staff and shoved, driving her backward just as Morlev Ren got back on his feet and reached them. 

Nydo spun away from Tirzah Ren's last distorted strike, whirling around to bring his staff up to block the downward stroke from the other knight. From there, he shoved the older knight back with the Force. 

Tirzah Ren stood, fury rolling off her in waves strong enough that it made the hair on the back of Akela's hair stand up. 

Nydo met her stroke easily, then curled his tall frame under, using the Force to shove at her ribs and unbalance her, throwing her onto her right arm. Her staff clattered out of her hand and Nydo shoved it off the mat with the Force. 

Then, he let it rest on both Tirzah and Marelov's chest at the same time. 

Akela stared at his brother. Nydo stood perfectly still, waiting patiently for the other knights to surrender. They finally did so, lowering their heads to the ground. 

"You've done an excellent job," Umdal Ren said from his place near the door. He uncrossed his arms, stepping forward, "You've both done well today. That's enough, for now. Rest until later." 

Nydo withdrew his weapons, then passed them back to Morlev and Tirzah Ren. Morlev looked at him for a long moment, then turned his eyes on Akela. Akela felt his ears grow hot under the watchful eyes of the older knight, but didn’t say anything or look away.

Tirzah Ren watched Nydo for a moment, then gently nudged his likely-bruised bicep with her closed fist, “You picked that up from one of Kylo Ren’s holos, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Nydo said. He didn’t smile, even though Akela could tell there was a streak of self-satisfaction there.

“I fought with him for thirty years. You’d think I’d have spotted that trick,” Tirzah pursed her lips, looking at Umdal Ren, who merely shrugged and smirked. He walked to the door, nodding for Laa Ren, who’d been standing next to him, silent as ever, to follow. 

“We’ve been summoned before the Supreme Leader,” Umdall said, “as soon as we’re done here. You too, Morlev. Nydo and Akela are to stay here and recover. We’ll see you all tomorrow. 0800 standard. Sharp.”

“Yes, sir,” Akela and Nydo muttered at the same time. They stood still as the Knights of Ren all pulled on their various helmets and cowls and walked out the door. Akela held his breath as they made their way out. As soon as they were gone, he let himself sit on the mat-covered floor with a grunt of exhaustion. His brother was right behind him. 

Nydo landed flat on his back, not caring if it was unprofessional. 

Akela sighed, resting a cheek on his bent knee and closing his eyes, “Where’s the water?”

He’d been standing, more or less at attention for the entirety of Nydo’s fight with Tirzah and Morlev Ren, even though he’d just finished his own sparring match with Laa Ren and Athan Ren. For some reason, the standing had proved to be far more challenging than the actual fight itself. 

“Here.” 

Akela heard a low rushing noise, followed by a light smack as what he assumed was a water bottle was summoned into Nydo’s hand.

The bottle squeaked as Nydo opened it and likely took a swig. Nydo let out an audible sigh, then said again “Here.”

“Thanks,” Akela mumbled. Akela opened into his eyes and grabbed the water bottle from Nydo’s hand.

“You think they’ll keep us?” Nydo asked, exhaling and looking up at the ceiling.

“Who?” Akela swallowed away the rasp that always seemed to come when he drank too much too quickly. Captain Progra had never commented on it and it happened to Nydo on occasion, albeit more rarely than with him, so he had to assume it was a normal behavior in humans. The loss of tiny details, connections to his own body, might have proved to be the most annoying part of his recovery, even more than learning to read and use the Force again. 

Not knowing his own body made him feel more powerless than anything else could; 

“The Knights of Ren,” Nydo said, turning his head to stare at Akela. He at least had the decency to not add _”obviously”_ to the end of that statement.

Akela shrugged, sipping his water again and not answering.

Nydo sighed and looked up at the ceiling again, “I know we’re technically supposed to be considering the Officer Academy, the Elite Trooper Squads, and the Knights of Ren, but it’s not… they’re not equal.” 

“I know, yeah,” Akela admitted, “I hope they do. We’ve been with them two- or is it three?”

“Yeah, almost three months,” Nydo said. He put his arms out to either side, stretching and staring off into the distance. Sometimes, he’d get a faraway look that was so far away that Akela wondered if he actually could see through the layers of duracrete and durasteel above him. 

Akela rubbed his eyes. They’d been under sleep surveillance for two nights this week, to ensure their brains were recovering properly at night. That hadn’t been too burdensome, except that Akela had felt awkward knowing he’d been watched as he slept. The actual sleep he’d gotten had been correspondingly poor. 

Then the Knights of Ren had decided to go ahead and have them spar two on one today following a night spent wired up to some strange cranial machine. 

“It’s not like we’ve been accepted to all three, yet,” Akela added, rubbing a hand over the tuft of hair at the top of his head. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but the movement was comforting, especially when he felt frustrated or tired, “we might not have a choice to make, if only one of them wants us.”

“True,” Nydo said, plucking the water bottle from Akela’s hand and sipping from it. He didn’t actually sit up, but instead just lifted his head the bare minimum required not to entirely choke on the water. He passed the water bottle back before continuing, “but if we’re accepted to the Knights of Ren, won’t the others automatically want us?”

Akela thought back to the way some of the officers looked at the Knights of Ren when they thought the Force users couldn’t see. Major Phasma was fairly comfortable, or at least controlled, around the Knights of Ren, but most stormtroopers seemed to want to avoid them whenever possible. They weren’t afraid of them, but there was a distinct lack of relaxation, like all the Force Users were Generals, even when they weren’t., “I don’t know. I don’t think the Stormtrooper command would want to insult the Knights of Ren by rejecting what they’d chosen, but I could see the Officer’s Academy doing it just to spite them a little.”

“Is there an option that lets us avoid all the politics?” Nydo asked weakly.

“Well, there’s death,” Akela offered.

Nydo shook his head, “too messy. Besides, I’m not pretty enough to die yet.”

“Not pretty enough?” 

“Yes. I need to hang on a few more years. Once I reach my peak physical appearance, then I can die and then when I’m paraded through in an open casket, everyone will see something worth seeing.”

Akela snickered, although he suddenly thought back to the haze of the accident. He couldn’t remember anything but light and pain and noise. He could remember the vague sound of metal on metal and a rushing sound, but nothing clearer than that. 

Father’s body hadn’t been in condition for an open casket. He’d been quietly buried while he and Nydo were still in their comas. At that thought, Akela straightened a little, pointing his toes to stretch his extended leg, “Do you think that Father would want us to choose one?”

Nydo sighed, “I don’t know, to be honest. The Storm Troopers would have ‘on the ground’ impact. We’d be on the front lines. The Force would be a huge asset there.” 

Akela ran a hand over his hair again, his mind suddenly full of the casualty rates in the battle reports he and Nydo had been studying, “Stormtroopers don’t have long lives, though.” 

Nydo snorted and sat up on his elbows, “Are you afraid to die for the Order, now?” 

Akela’s ears burned, “No, I just meant that all this investment put in our care and recovery would be a loss.”

Nydo grunted. 

“If we join the Officer’s Academy, we’ll be the first Force users in the chain of command,” Akela offered.

“Yes, but if we join the Academy, we’ll be the first Force users within the chain of command. How do you think that would go, considering we’re already legacies,” Nydo countered.

Akela groaned, resting his forehead on his knee and thinking. He and his brother would face questions of nepotism wherever they went, although it might actually be worse in the Officer’s Academy, even if multiple officers were second and third generation members of the First Order. Some of them had relatives who had served the Empire. The real problem was their age. Most cadets joined the Academy at eleven or twelve, but he and Nydo were almost grown. He couldn’t remember their exact ages and no one would tell him, preferring to let that information come to them on its own. 

Regardless, they would be entering at the same level as students who had been working steadily for five to seven years already. They had already surpassed much of those early years of physical training thanks to their father, but they still likely would be unpopular among their peers. 

“I wonder what Mother would pick,” Nydo whispered. 

Akela shrugged. He knew nothing of his mother or what she’d want. While various people they’d interacted with had been familiar with Father, some for decades, their Mother hadn’t been close with anyone. She’d been private while she was alive and she’d died young, from what Captain Proga said. 

Akela and Nydo’s earliest memories and the ones right around the accident were the haziest, so their mother was all but lost to them again. 

“I wish we had even a holo of Mother,” Akela said. His memories of her were vague impressions at best, although he wondered if that was just due to how young he’d been when she died. He wasn’t allowed access to her records, which hadn’t included images due to Father’s interference in any case. Apparently, her information would reveal information that their doctors wanted them to remember on their own, rather than be given to them. 

Not even a picture. 

Most officer’s wives, however, preferred not to have their faces lying around whenever possible. Keeping them secret prevented bounties and kidnappings. Considering Father’s position, it was incredibly likely he would have demanded all images be kept hidden, even from the most secret of files. 

Akela had to rely on his vague impression of light, warmth, safety, and love, rather than anything concrete. Nydo had barely any more to offer, but two was both one more than one - and twice as much as one. 

The best concrete detail that Nydo could offer was blue eyes.

“Captain Luscius said we’ll find out which programs want us very soon,” Nydo offered, clearly trying to draw Akela off the subject. Akela opened his mouth to point out that he couldn’t imagine when Captain Luscius would have told Nydo that, since Akela had never heard the man _speak_ before. 

He didn’t get the chance.


	13. We Are Not Individuals but a Great Accumulation of All That Lived Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finally finds answers about her past in the place she least expected
> 
> [This is update one of two]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings at the bottom

**“We are [the] product of the immense torque that propels this universe. We are not individuals but a great accumulation of all that lived before.”― Tanya Tagaq, _Split Tooth_**

Rey looked down at the sleeping children scattered around the dorm room. They'd had to take over one of the barracks for the Senate guards in order to find this much sleep space in one area where the kids would feel safe.

She had nine new trainees.

Rey had sent out Gida'smoo and her crew, expecting to hear back about one potential Force user- the tallest one, Temiri, was apparently the one Gida'smoo had first sensed- and now she had nine orphans to care for.

 _You're now a mom of twelve, apparently,_ Rey thought ruefully, thinking of Gida'smoo, Jonas, and her unborn baby, _Ben's going to love this._

These kids all had the too-large eyes, sunken cheeks, and curled shoulders she often associated with the children of Jakku. Later on, she'd learned it was just a sign of malnutrition on young humans. Rey looked from one sleeping face to another, turning every detail of their arrival over and over in her mind.

She'd been standing in Otica'smoo's office, talking to him about- what had it even been? Was it getting her in front of the Outer Rim Security Panel? No, no, it was about a meeting with the Senator from Mon Cala, who was currently home and unwilling to travel in person just to see her- and then she'd noticed something in the corner of her eye. It hadn't been light or even a fast movement. It was almost like something to her right hand flexed or something, even a little bit. By the time she'd turned her head, the flex had become Gida'smoo's face, stepping out of nothing and into the room.

Rey had immediately stepped back out of the way of the near dozen humans that were suddenly invading the generous office space. She wished she'd had the wherewithal to look over Gida's shoulder at whatever was behind her, There had to be _something_ there.

No one moves through nothing.

Besides, what Gida'smoo had described wasn't Nothing. At least, half of it wasn't. From what Rey could guess, even with her very limited understanding of hyperspeed physics from years of flying, Gida'smoo had traveled at lightspeed, judging by the brightness and the glimpses of reality. The darkness on the other side, however, worried her.

There weren't any places with no stars.

Rey had never heard of any places without stars.

Rey wished she'd taken her books with her. Over the past fifteen years, she'd developed a nice little collection of holocrons, texts, and other artifacts. Some were in particularly ancient forms of basic, which made them a pain to decipher. A few others were in other languages that she couldn't read. There were a few that she wasn't even sure were in any actual languages. One book in particular had strange text that didn't seem to match any language, letter system, or rune system that any expert she'd consulted could name.

Rey had thought about bringing some of her more accessible books along to see if she could coordinate meetings with an expert at a University in one of Corsucant's more prestigious education hubs, but she'd decided against it. The hope had been that she, Poe, and Finn would stay busy with meetings and testimony.

They had, until nine humans appeared in Senator Otica'smoo's office and cleared her schedule for the week.

Now she needed her books for her own consultation. And she didn't have them.

One of the smaller children sniffed and rolled over. Rey straightened, looking down at the small girl to make sure she wasn't about to wake up and need something. The girl didn't stir any further than to roll over, so Rey leaned back against the wall. She crossed her arms, thinking.

 _What I wouldn't give to have Ben here,_ Rey thought agitated, _he'd had some idea what to do. He always knew so much more about this stuff and about the Force than I ever did._

Rey wondered for the thousandth time, where Ben and Jonas could possibly be. Athiktos had been more or less torn to pieces, but no one had any idea where to look from there. The Resistance had tried to search neighboring planets as quietly as possible, but they'd found nothing.

It wasn't like they could put Jonas's face on the holonet and tell the entire Galaxy who he was with. Rey had been living an uneasy truce with Akuryate and Zhet, but she knew that the fastest way to break that trust would be to demand some kind of pardon for Ben. She wanted one, desperately, but she didn't know how to go about doing this. Todra said that if she used her power adequately, she could make it happen, but Rey had no idea how her Force abilities could make an entire galaxy excuse the crimes Ben had committed.

"What am I gonna do?" Rey whispered. She felt a sharp pain in her mouth and jumped, pulling her thumb away from her teeth. She stared down at her hand, dumbfounded. How had her thumb ended up in her mouth?

 _I'm more anxious that I realized,_ Rey thought, bringing her thumb up to her eye. She flicked at one jagged edge near the side, glad she didn't see any blood; she'd been probably biting at a hangnail unconsciously and had bitten at the side of her nail instead. From the time she was little, she'd developed a habit of chewing on the dry skin around her fingernails, particularly her thumbs, and even though she was now comfortably into her thirties, she had never managed to shake the habit.

 **"Greetings, Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY],"** BB-8 said, slowly rolling up to the open doorway. She turned her head, her camera taking all of the sleeping faces before them into focus, **“Group [CHILDREN - AFFILIATION UNKNOWN] are location [ROOM [SENATE DORM 45-2] and are human process [SLEEP]. Group [CHILDREN - AFFILIATION UNKNOWN] description [NUMEROUS]. Query [GROUP MEMBERS [GROUP [CHILDREN - AFFILIATION UNKNOWN]] ORIGIN [LOCATION[CURRENTLY UNKNOWN]]]?”**

"Our new padawans, BB, I guess," Rey shrugged, "I don't know when they'll start training or how we'll go above doing this, but we're going to have to."

**“Will task [HUMAN PROCESS [RAISE CHILDREN]] process [INTERFERE] with Mission [FIND JONAS]? Mission [FIND JONAS] is Priority Level [TOP PRIORITY]. Human process [TRAIN PADAWANS] requires [TIME [INDETERMINATE YEARS]].”**

"I don't know," Rey murmured, "but we have to focus on these kids at the moment. They don't have anything. I trust Jonas and Ben. They'll be alright. For right now, however, we have to focus on them."

**“Human process [CARE], Human process [TRAIN PADAWANS], and human process [SETTLE] all require [TIME [CALCULATING HOURS - REQUEST [PLEASE STAND BY]]].”**

"It’s okay BB. You don’t have to figure it all out. I know it could take a long time," Rey admitted, "but I can't drop everything and go looking for Jonas, even if I want to."

**“Query [PROCESS [EXPLAIN[WHY STATEMENT [PREVIOUS STATEMENT BY DESIGNATION [BB-8-SELF]] IS ACCURACY [INACCURATE]]]?”**

Rey turned away and closed the door behind her, "because if I do that, I may just bring Jonas's dad into a death trap."

**“Designation [KYLO REN - AFFILIATION UNKNOWN] is accused of [LOADING INFORMATION [KYLO REN CRIMINAL RECORD]. Time until task [LOADING INFORMATION [KYLO REN CRIMINAL RECORD]:STATUS[COMPLETE]] is [15 MINUTES AND 52 SECONDS].” BB-8 paused, then began again, “Information [CRIMINAL RECORD OF DESIGNATION [KYLO REN-AFFILIATION UNKNOWN]] is description [EXTENSIVE]. Is government process [PROSECUTION] of designation [KYLO REN-AFFILIATION UNKNOWN] description [JUST]?”**

"I'm not after justice, BB," Rey said. She looked out one winder, her breath catching as she watched the sunset outside. This place truly was beautiful. Whole continents on the planet were all industrial sites or layers and layers of almost self-sustaining cities within the city of Coruscant, but Rey had less interest in the architecture and design of the place. However, at moments like this, she could see the beauty in the geometry of it all. The high skyscrapers cut the sunset apart, but some of them also had special shields that diffused light over the course of the day, keeping the city from growing too hot or from any windows or siding from turning into an intentional heat ray.

One of their docents from earlier in the week had explained that Coruscant was the most metropolitan planet in the known galaxy, with cultural influences from all other planets converging there and mixing. However, she also explained that every species, tribe, country, and subculture had managed to eek out at least one block or another somewhere in Coruscant, to make their home and to keep their identity alive. It was also why Coruscant was still a center of innovation and had been for thousands of years. Every part of the city, especially the outer levels, was meticulously planned, tested, and executed in order to be efficient, safe, beautiful, and useful.

BB thrilled behind Rey, rotating a little on her main axis, **“Justice is Priority [HIGHEST PRIORITY] of The Resistance. Designation [BB-8-SELF] and Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] should also have justice as Priority [HIGHEST PRIORITY]. Otherwise Process [ALL PROCESS] are description [POINTLESS]. Purpose of [RESISTANCE GOAL [SAFETY OF DESIGNATION [ENTIRE GALAXY]]] is so that Designation [ALL DESIGNATIONS] process [LIVE] in galaxy description [SAFE].”**

"The Resistance is trying to fight the tyranny that the First Order brings," Rey said, kneeling down so she could talk to BB-8 quietly. The carpeted hallways of the Senate house always seemed so stiff and formal. Rey always felt guilty for the smallest sounds she made, "but there are a lot of kinds of tyranny and injustice. That's why the Senate exists and why other groups work to deal with those things."

**“Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] Goal[PRIMARY GOAL] is !Justice. Query [PRIMARY GOAL OF DESIGNATION [JEDI FRIEND REY] IS GOAL [GOAL UNKNOWN]]?”**

_You are so like Poe it's not even funny,_ Rey thought. Of course Poe would more or less raise a droid who saw the world simplistically, directly, and with an insatiable pull towards the moral high ground.

"Because I don't want Ben to die. I love him. I want him to meet the new baby. I want to be a family. And if justice means he goes to prison forever or is executed, then I don't have that," Rey said, shrugging. Her lip twisted as hot tears stung the back of her eyes, but she blinked rapidly to try and clear them.

BB-8 let out a low whistle, **“Designation [DESIGNATION UNKNOWN - FUTURE OFFSPRING] human process [MATURATE] results [SUB-OPTIMAL] without the inclusion of Designation [FIRST ORDER OPERATIVE-KYLO REN]?”**

“Yes, BB, it will,” Rey said. She gently touched the edge of BB’s main viewport, smiling in a way that pressed her back molars together too tightly and made her jaw hurt, “it will be okay, though. I know it will.”

BB-8’s camera jumped from Rey’s smile to her eyes and back, then she let out a series of high trills, **“Statement [PREVIOUS STATEMENT] accuracy [UNCONFIRMED - UNLIKELY],” BB-8 said. Rey smiled, but didn’t argue. She sighed, but BB-8 continued, instead, “However, Designation [BB-8-SELF] process [BELIEVE] in Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY], even when Designation [JEDI FRIEND REY] human process [SPEAK] information [STATEMENTS [STATEMENT ACCURACY [IMPOSSIBLE]].”**

“Thank you, BB-8,” Rey said. She stood up and walked down the hallway, back towards Senator Otica’smoo’s office. She resisted the urge to rub her face in exhaustion. Before Athiktos, she’d gotten more or less used to having cosmetics on her face occasionally and made a point not to touch her face and smear whatever someone had slathered or pressed there. She didn’t exactly enjoy having creams or powders on her skin, although the effect was pleasant enough, but facing the wrath of a makeup artist was worse than a Wookie, so Rey had adhered to a firm “do not touch your face” policy.

Three months in a jungle, however, was enough to train anyone out of anything.

As Rey walked, she thought back to what _else_ she’d learned on Athiktos:

_“And my parents?” Rey asks._

_“They were poor traders, working first on a ship and then on planet.” Qui Gon says, “I stayed closest to them. You weren’t their first child, or their last, but you were the only one with the Force.”_

_“So they left me on Jakku?” Rey asks._

_“They did.” Qui Gon Jinn says, “They hoped that, if you disappeared, those hunting you would leave everyone alone.”_

_“I was being hunted?” She is reeling. She had a family, she’d had parents, and she’d been hunted?!_

_“Well, tracked and monitored, to be more accurate. The New Republic was looking for Force-sensitive children and your abilities stood out. On Jakku, you were anonymous, far enough away that no one would notice you for who you are. Your parents didn’t survive long enough to go find you again.”_

_I was fine without my parents_ , Rey thought, _we could survive without Ben_

The idea of needing someone, of not being able to cope or exist or function due to the lack of any single person made her stomach twist. She’d survived when Luke rejected her all those years ago. She’d somehow managed to stomach the pain of having to fly away from Kylo, stealing his baby from him right under his nose. She’d watched her own parents fly away from her, ignoring her pleas for them to keep her.

_Come back!_

_Come back!_

_Be quiet, girl!_

_I’ll be good, I promise! I’ll be better!_

Rey closed her eyes for a moment, then glanced around for an escape route. Finally, she spotted a single-occupancy refresher and crossed to it. She locked the door behind her, not even stopping to let BB-8 inside. She sat on the floor and scooted her back against the wall next to the door, the tears she’d been so desperate to quash finally running down her face.

_Mama I’m sorry I’ll be good! I won’t get mad anymore! I won’t ever get mad so nothing will break. I’m sorry, Mama!_

_I know you are, baby. We’ll come back for you when we’re ready._

_We’ll come back._

Rey blindly wiped at her eyes, taking a gulp of air. Makeup artists be kriffed.

_Mama! Mama wait! Adom! Adom, don’t close the door, I’m coming! I’m coming!_

They’d let Rey get distracted at the table. At every town on every planet they’d ever visited, Rey or one of her siblings had gotten distracted at some table or stall or by a cute animal. It was almost as predictable as the fact that they’d be cheated out of some money or value or work.

Rey had stopped at one of the stalls, distracted by a part that looked a lot like the lightspeed gearshift Papa had broken a few weeks ago. He’d managed to rig up a modified one that barely worked, but it didn’t fit perfectly. This, however, looked like as much of a match as they could hope for.

Rey had turned around to tell her parents, to give them the information that might make them love her again and lift the cloud of distance and uncertainty that she’d experienced for weeks since she’d accidentally smashed a window at one of the random trading outposts they’d traveled through. It had been expensive to replace and, since then, her parents hadn’t looked at her quite the same.

The problem was that, even though the shop owner had blamed her and everyone had known that it was Rey who broke the window, she hadn’t actually touched it. She hadn’t even been facing it. She’d been bickering with- with someone? Who?- her _sister_.

_Her sister, **Gemma**. _

Rey took a shuddering breath, opening her eyes. For the first time in more than 25 years, she remembered her sister’s name and face. She’d been arguing about a toy and the same pressure that built up in her so often, the thing that hummed in her ears at a frequency no one else could hear and drew her to particularly strange pieces of junk or statues or carvings or people suddenly cracked and went silent.

As did the window.

_Mama and Papa didn’t look at her the same way again._

Six-year-old Rey had become a liability, one so costly that even her cries across an open runway hadn’t been enough. She’d tried to run after them, Rey now remembered. She hadn’t been sure until now. She’d always that’d she’d run, that she’d been happy and loved enough to instinctually go after them. That her days of counting, of hard work, of waiting, had been based on love rather than delusion.

Unkar had caught her, but it hadn’t been needed.

Papa had closed the hangar door, even as Cor pointed, his eyes wide and horrified, across the sand at her. Her big brother, the one who always seemed to know how to placate any animal they came across, had seen her. He’d tried to warn them.

He’d wanted to come back for her.

Papa hadn’t.

Or at least, he had decided against it.

Rey wiped her eyes with her sleeve, not caring that she smeared kohl up to her ear. She’d spent more than a decade, wearing her hair the same way, forgoing darker colored scraps in order to match what her parents had abandoned, even though she told herself that she favored blending in with the sand, and trying to be dutiful and hardworking in order to win back people who had never really loved her, not fully, not the way she loved Jonas and Gida’smoo and her own unnamed flicker.

Rey swallowed, opening her mouth to exhale and try to ease the pressure in her throat that came from trying not to scream and wait and destroy everything, just like her parents had expected and been afraid of.

“I love you, Flicker,” Rey said suddenly. Her voice was so choked-off with unshed tears that it didn’t even sound like her, but she didn’t care. She pressed a hand to her abdomen, remembering the day Quorvin had found her. The man had been about her age, prematurely aged by the desert. He’d found her, curling in the back of one of Plutt’s warehouses, one hand pressed to her stomach to ease the pain of hunger. She hadn’t brought back what Plutt deemed to be enough salvage.

Quorvin had been looking for someone Plutt owed him and had instead found her. She hadn’t even been twelve yet when Quorvin took her away from Plutt, even that little bit. He showed her his lodgings, promised not to charge her, and let her pretend to watch his back. When they’d found the AT-AT, he’d let her claim it. Let her call it “home”.

He’d been sour-tempered and taciturn and untrusting and had loved her, in his distant way, unconditionally.

“I love you,” Rey whispered again, extending into the Force just a little bit. She had avoided using the Force to contact the fetus too much, afraid of messing with its development and personality, but she needed it to know. She needed to tell it in the only way she could that she did love it.

Again, that faint and undeniable warmth, like a friend waving from a distant hill, answered back.

“Flicker, flicker,” Rey said, smiling in earnest through her tears.

The fetus, either through its heartbeat or the Force, flickered back.

“I promise I will love you,” Rey said, “I promise I will.”

Flicker blinked again, more rapidly and more brightly.

Rey withdrew and stood. When she saw her reflection, she paled. Her entire face of makeup had been obliterated by her tears. It was a total loss.

Grabbing one of the towels left next to the sink by the Galactic Senate custodians, she started wiping her makeup off. It would be better to have a face that was clean and a little pink than one with shimmer and kohl and products smeared haphazardly on it.  
As the products began to fade and the towel turned a particularly interesting shade of cream occasionally run with streaks of black, Rey let herself think, even for a moment about something other than the makeup.

Why now? Rey Jedi had been wracking her brains for years- for decades- trying to remember anything identifiable or useful about her family and had come up with nothing. Why had she been able to remember not one, but two of her siblings? After almost thirty years?

What had changed that made her realize this all now?

Gida’smo, the thought appeared, both stubborn and nonsensical, in her mind. She set down her towel, revealing a nearly-clean face and looked into her own reflection. Her hair was, mercifully, intact and other than some redness on her cheek and around the delicate skin of her eyes, she didn’t look bad.

Gida’smoo just did something impossible. Just experienced something impossible, Rey thought. She wished Luke or someone who knew what they were talking about was here. She’d even take Qui Gon Jinn, as awkward as it might be.

______Hello, Master Jinn, do you have a moment to talk about why I suddenly remember the wildly traumatic day your niece or nephew abandoned me on one of the harshest inhabited planets in the Galaxy when I was six years old?_ _ _ _ _ _

______No, maybe not Qui Gon Jinn,______ Rey thought, ducking her head closer to the sink to press some cool water to the red and slightly irritated skin around her eyes.

_____“Rey,”_ _ _ _ _

Rey’s head snapped up. She lowered the towel, staring at the shocked hazel eyes reflected back at her.

Rey knew that voice. She didn’t know where from, but she knew it.

 _ _ _ _ _“Rey, come with me,”_____ the voice was gentle, like a whisper from a kind man, and it filled Rey with joy and terror with equal measure, which she did not understand.

Then she saw the snow.

It fell around her and onto her head, but didn’t really seem to touch her. She looked to her left and recognized where she was immediately. She’d only spent a few short hours on Starkiller base, but it was a place that she would never forget. Backpedaling out of the vision, if that was possible, Rey slammed into a tree. She touched its bark, nearly screaming when it felt real under her hands. The vision wasn’t fading. It was growing more real.

Was she going insane?

 _ _ _ _ _“Rey, it’s time to take your next steps,”_____ The voice said again.

Rey’s heart dropped into her stomach at the sound of a scream. She turned and saw herself flying backward, away from Finn, and landing in the snow at the tree’s base. It had been a nasty and rough use of the dark side, mostly driven by Kylo Ren’s desperation to eliminate a potentially serious threat without hurting her.

If Rey was seeing this happen- and she was, judging by the pain in her exposed hands from the cold and the roughness of the bark under her palm- but that wasn’t possible! No one could see through time.

No one could travel through space without a ship, Rey thought suddenly. She watched, her twisting, as Kylo Ren, as Ben, savagely drew his lightsaber up Finn’s back. He’d severed multiple vertebrae, narrowly missing his spinal cord, and had severed more than one major nerve line in Finn’s body. Back at the Resistance, Dr. Kalonia had managed to put Finn’s nerves back together with enough speed to prevent long term damage, but he’d needed a cybernetic spine to hold and protect his real one, as well as some implanted nerve supporters throughout the years.

Rey felt a sudden urge to intervene, to run now, and ease just a little bit of the damage. If this was real and she could affect things, maybe her Force healing could speed up his recovery or spare him just a little of the nerve pain that would plague him otherwise.

But she couldn’t. Rey knew she couldn’t, but it killed her not to.

Something crackled behind her and Rey turned, somehow leaving Starkiller and landing in a cluttered underground room made of worn stone. Sunlight filtered in, even a little bit, from between the cracks in the ancient surface.

Takodana. It was Maz’s old palace in Takodana.

Rey saw the open box that had contained Luke’s lightsaber for nearly a decade before she had found it. Well, not really Luke’s. It was Anakin Skywalker’s. She’d given it to Ben as a peace offering when she’d come to train with him after Luke rejected her. He’d let her wield it publicly, allowing her to shame his uncle in that last and cruelest way until her own lightsaber was complete.

When Rey had left, she’d stolen Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber and her own red saberstaff back. It had taken months to heal her kyber crystal to its now-famous yellow, but Anakin’s had been untouched the entire time.

Until Jonas broke it under the heavy paw of one of the strange predators on Athiktos.

If the past Rey- honestly, I’m the Future Rey, since this place is in the past, Rey thought- had already taken the lightsaber and left, that meant the palace was about to be attacked. She turned and raced for the doorway, unsure how to get out without being seen.

Maz Kanata’s bespectacled amber eyes answered that question for her.

Maz frowned, looking over her shoulder at the top of the steps where clear sunlight filtered down. She turned back to Rey, eyes narrowing.

“Same eyes,” Rey promised. She knew her voice would give her away, but she also knew Maz knew the Force better than any non-Force user she’d ever met.

“Where-?” Maz looked past Rey, frowning.

“I can’t tell you,” Rey said sadly. She smiled tightly, “may the Force be with you.” She needed to leave, now, and go somewhere- anywhere!- else before this palace exploded. Maz needed to get to the surface, too, before she got buried under the First Order onslaught.

It was time for Rey to take the controls here. She took a deep breath, drawing on the Force to try and tap into wherever the voice was coming from.

______Rey,_ _ _ _ _ _

Rey closed her eyes and realized she didn’t need to walk back down the hallways of her own memory. She’d already done that. That’s why she’d relived her abandonment and the experiences the vision from, from Takodana, had shown her. It was time to change direction.

Rey crossed her arms over her chest, breathed deeply, and kicked the front of both feet up, rotating her body on the axis of her heels, and falling back.

Maz cried out, but Rey didn’t hesitate. She reached out to that same voice and followed it through the gap, not between the galaxy and whatever lay beyond it, but between reality and whatever lay beyond that.

The ground below her and behind her seemed to fold as she reached it, bending without tearing. It reminded her of being wrapped in something. It didn’t ripple like water or even fill around her like bacta. Instead, space seemed to bend until it faded away. After she reached past the point where she knew she would either hit the stone ground of Maz’s castle or, she felt herself rotate a little more. Her feet lifted off the ground. She didn’t quite slide out of the past, but when she opened her eyes, she found herself surrounded by total darkness.

No, not total darkness.

As Rey looked down at herself, she realized she could see. There was no light source and nothing else she could see or feel, but she could see herself clearly. Rey looked around, above and below herself. She was suspended in nothing and on nothing.

Rey prayed that wasn’t actually true. If it was, then she was dead. She’d need someone to push off against or pull herself through to get anywhere. Although, she wasn’t in a vacuum.

The fact that she wasn’t dead proved that well enough.

“Okay,” Rey said, trying to see even the faintest glimmer of anything, “I guess I just pick a direction and hope for the best.”

For some reason, she’d stopped falling. There wasn’t an obvious reason for her lack of momentum, seeing as she hadn’t actually run into a surface or substance that should have stopped her fall, but she’d stopped all the same. Which meant she had literally limitless options to move in. Just her luck, only one would be correct.

“Why are you here?” A voice asked.

This was a new one. It was echoing and female. It spoke without an accent she could distinctly pick up, but it was at least speaking Basic.

“Where is ‘here’?” Rey offered.

“How have I never heard of you before?” The voice asked. Rey looked around, trying to see where the voice had come from. It was everywhere and nowhere all at once. It didn’t make sense. Was this the voice of the void itself or was Rey hearing another person lost within it?

“When is it?” The voice asked suddenly.

“‘When is it’?” Rey repeated.

 _ _ _ _ _“It’s time to go, Rey,”_____ The original voice, the whisper that had been guiding her around all day and as far back as Takodana, spoke from behind her. Rey whipped around and was greeted by the glowing Force ghost of an old man dressed in traditional Jedi robes. Rey recognized him immediately from an old holo.

“Master Kenobi!”

 _ _ _ _ _“Hello, Master Jedi,”_____ Kenobi said, smiling warmly, _____“you cannot stay here, not yet, but it was time for you to come here.”_____

“Master Kenobi!?”

The female voice broke through the warmth of the moment. The old Force ghost chuckled but didn’t answer the disembodied voice. Instead, he touched Rey’s wrist with his right hand, guiding her to stand in front of him, _____“put out your arm, imagine when and where you want to be, and take a step,” he said._____

“Wait!” The female voice sounded frantic now, not aetherial, “Master! Wait! You can’t be-”

 _ _ _ _ _“Go, Rey,”_____ Master Kenobi said. He gently pushed Rey forward. Rey stepped forward, but her surroundings didn’t change. She looked over her shoulder and saw Master Kenobi was gone.

“Wait! Just tell me-” the echoing female voice broke off. Rey, deciding she didn’t want to be around an upset whatever-was-capable-of-speaking-so-loud, brought her hand up. She thought of Otica’smoo’s office in the Senate and of the calendar she’d seen projected on the wall last she’d been in there. She added an hour to the time underneath, just to be safe, and lifted her right foot.

“How many years since the founding of the Empire?” The echoing voice burst out.

Rey, too thrown by the question to think of stopping her step said, “the Empire was overthrown forty years ago.” Her foot somehow landed on both something and nothing and the darkness around her seemed to split and reform into the interior of Senator Otica’smoo’s office.

Rey was greeted by screams on all sides. She jumped looking for the source of the disturbance before she realized it was her.

“Master Jedi! Where have you been!?” Ahosha’smoo burst out.

“How did YOU get here?’ Otica’smoo asked at the same time.

Rey opened her mouth, looking around at the shocked faces of the Senator, his wife, his assistant, his chief-of-staff, Finn, Todra, and Poe. She closed it and shrugged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A girl remembers being abandoned as a child


	14. Stronger Than Lover's Love is Lover's Hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More questions are answered, but this time, its about the boys raised by the First Order.
> 
> [This is the second of two updates]

**“Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.” ― Euripides, _Medea_**

Nydo grabbed Akela's free hand, dragging him back to the door behind them. Their weapons were across the room. They weren't cleared to carry blasters and didn't have lightsabers because, _Of course, they didn't_ , but Akela had never wanted one more in his life, he was sure. 

The Resistance was here, inside one of their destroyers. They'd somehow managed to sneak in and get all the way down to some of the private training rooms without being caught. How was that even possible? 

Akela felt a strange kind of vibration near his head, like the cropped hair next to his right ear, was being affected by a very narrow draft. Something within him, something primordial and feral seemed to wake up and hiss. So he did the only thing that made sense to him at that moment. He grabbed the back of his brother's shirt and threw both of them on the ground. 

The water bottle in his hand clanged so loudly on the hard surface of the floor that it was downright jarring, but Akela didn't care. When he looked up, he saw the singed paint from where bolts had nearly hit him and Nydo. 

So that's what 'a strange hum near his ear' meant. Excellent. 

Nydo slammed open the back door, throwing himself through and dragging Akela in his wake. As they reached the hallway, they tumbled over their own feet and each other, racing up the hall to try and get to a main thoroughfare. The door behind them banged loudly as the Resistance fighters tried to Force it open, but Akela had managed to warp the handle just enough to be useful.

Nydo and Akela slid into the hallway, looking around for any direction or any help. Akela glanced left, leaning forward to look deeper in the cave-like rooms that were the sole preview of the knights of ren. He saw nothing and, when he reminded himself to reach into the Force, he felt nothing. 

Why would a dozen Resistance soldiers be stupid enough to show up to a Star destroyer alone without even trying to hide their appearances? 

"They wouldn't. No one is that dumb," Nydo said. 

Akela had spoken aloud. 

"Let's go! Back to the main hallway. We'll find someone there," Nydo said. He turned right and jogged up the hallway.

"Do you want the water bottle?" Akela called, running after him, "since, you know, we have no weapons?"

"You keep it," Nydo said. He opened the door to the outer hallway and immediately shut it again as a blaster bolt sailed inside, narrowly missing the top of his head. 

"That answers that question," Akela said. He walked over to the doorway, leaning against the opposite side from Nydo, "they're not alone. What do we do?"

"What do you think we do?" Nydo asked, wrinkling his nose, "our father devoted his life to the cause. We fight, just like he did."

"Okay, but if we get shot, they may not help us this time," Akela said, shrugging. 

"Let's make it worth their initial investment, then," Nydo suggested. He looked around for any kind of weapon, "KRIFF, where's the armory?" 

"No idea," Akela thought, looking around. Movement at the end of the hallway caught his attention, though, rendering the question moot, "they broke out, let's go!" 

Nydo leaned against the door, opening it a hair. Immediately, the sounds of fighting, shouts, blaster bolts, heavy footfalls, and general chaos flooded into the room. Luckily, no stray gunfire came near them again, so Nydo opened the door enough for Akela to slip through, and he followed suit. 

Akela had never been anywhere so loud in his entire life. They'd tested his hearing, at one point simulating a large room full of people talking at once in order to help see if his ability to tune out noise had been affected, which would inhibit his attention span or something similar, according to Doctor Palesa but this was so much worse than that.

"The door!" Nydo shouted, "we need to break the door again!" 

"how?" Akela asked. It doesn't have a handle from this side."

"What about the locking mechanism?" Nydo asked, looking over his shoulder. The fighting had moved up the hallway some. Akela could see a line of smooth white armor up ahead, keeping the invaders at bay for a moment. Occasionally, stray bullets shot past them, but they always landed in the ceiling of the hallway or glanced harmlessly off the floor.

"What about it?" Akela asked. 

The door clicked, which was all the warning that Akela and Nydo had to begin running away from the gunfire, near the slightly hazy but otherwise unoccupied fighters.

"Wait, the 'troopers!" Akela said. The door to the Knights of Ren Hold slammed open and a handful of the enemy appeared. At the sound, one of the stormtroopers looked over their shoulder and gave a shout, turning to aim at the new arrivals, but he was immediately felled by a blaster bolt from one of the rougher-looking insurgents.

Akela roared in fury and frustration. He reached out without even thinking, throwing all of his anger out of his right hand and slamming the door with all of his might. It rocked on its hinges, slamming shut and catching one of the insurgents in the head, and she tried to make her way through. The door flung back open, and the female dropped to the ground like a stone. 

Her fellows turned and saw the boys from before behind them, but before they could fire at them, the stormtroopers further up the hallway gave them cover. The Resistance insurgents ran back into the doom as Nydo and Akela turned up their heels and ran down the hallway. They had to get out of here, fast.

As they reached the end of the massive thoroughfare and turned right, something horrible happened. 

The world behind them exploded. 

Akela barely managed to lift his arms to cover his head as he was thrown half off his feet and into the wall. He'd been making the turn when the main hallway exploded, and the Force of his turn combined with the Force behind them and unbalanced him. Nydo managed to keep his balance, but he turned around hurriedly to see down the hallway and was greeted by an army of what looked like every ruffian in the galaxy. 

"Akela, get up!" Nydo said. He grabbed Akela and helped him to his feet before rushing him down their side hallway and deeper into the ship. They had to find someone in command, someone who could give them direction. 

Akela lifted his left hand and threw the water bottle with all of his might. Luckily, it had a tapered end and was more like a very small metal club that some of the heavy cylinders he'd used. It flew through the air in an arc until it didn't. 

Nydo raised his arm, mimicking a throwing motion of his own, but nothing flew from his hand this time. Instead, the water bottle rocketed through the air, slamming into the half-heartedly helmeted head of one of the soldiers. He fell back with little more than a soft crunch and a thud. His fellows, who had been looking for what it was that Nydo had thrown, stared down at him in astonishment and backed up. 

They were likely looking for a grenade, which gave Akela and Nydo the chance to run further up the hallway and turn left. 

"We need weapons," Akela said, "weapons besides that."

"What do you suggest we take?" Nydo snapped back, "I haven't been passing up on useful weapons along the way, have I?"

"Those!" Akela said. He skidded to a stop, and Nydo nearly lost balance as he tried to stop, too. Akela opened his hand, calling blasters from the fallen bodies of two stormtroopers who had landed halfway in the hallway.

"That is so gross," Nydo muttered but accepted his anyway nad kept jogging ahead of them. 

"How many shots do you have?" Akela asked, not even bothering to argue the morality of war with his brother.

"I've got eight," Nydo said, "you?"

"Four." 

"We'll take what we can get."

"You're only saying that because you got the one with eight!"

"You want to circle back and ask for a return?!" Nydo snapped, whirling to face Akela. Immediately, his attention was caught by something over Akela's shoulder, and he raised his weapon, firing twice and dropping two enemy insurgents before they could do more than step into the hallway, "enough talk. We go now."

"When this is all over, someone is so dead," Akela muttered, jogging after his brother as they made their way up the hallway. They couldn't hear any sounds of battle, but Akela wasn't sure if that made him relieved or more afraid. Silence meant the battle was over, but it didn't always reveal who had won. 

What are they doing here? Akela thought, "they're disorganized and unfitting to rule, but the Resistance isn't stupid. If Finn Alucard and Poe Dameron and something Akuryate decided to send so many people here, likely to die, then there had to be something or someone of VALUE HERE. 

"Less speculating, more running!" Nydo called over his shoulder. 

"Where are we going?" Akela called.

"This way," Nydo shouted. He skidded to a stop, however, at the sight of the absolute bloodbath before them. Instead, he changed direction, running left again and running down a side hallway and further up the way they'd been earlier.

"Nydo!" Akela said, stepping after his brother, but not following him, "that will just lean back to the same main thoroughfare we list left. It'll be full of the Resistance, too."

"Where do you suggest we go?" Nydo shot back. 

"Downstairs. We can take a stair system and go down and in a floor. It'll give us a chance to get out of the way and get closer to some of the inner command centers, which might be where Captain Proga or Captain Lucius is."

"Okayfine," Nydo grumbled. He looked around for a doorway to a central staircase, but that question was answered in the worst way possible when people suddenly started to pour out one of the main stairwells on the opposite hallway from them. 

"No point, just run," Nydo said, breaking forward into a run. 

Akela, meanwhile, turned and raised his blaster, catching the first sentient in its single round eye. The creature dropped, and Akela raised his weapon again, this time felling a human in his right cheek. 

"Akela!" Nydo shouted.

"Wai- there!" Akela opened his palm and caught the thing he'd been hoping for the entire time: the Resistance aggressors had brought along some high-voltage weapons. Akela knew that blaster bolts were faster, but an intense electrical pulse could still be a fairly powerful weapon. 

"Let's go let's go," Nydo shouted, but then he saw the high voltage staff land in Akela's hand and froze.

"Where's the pipe?" Nydo asked.

Akela glanced up, then shook his head, "not here."

"If it's not here, then it'll be one hallway over. That's what all those maps said the others we had to use to get our reading back, right?"

"Right," Akela said, running down the hallway. He darted down, Nydo hot on his heels, and paused four steps behind where Nydo stood. 

"I need a shield," Nydo said suddenly.

"You're better at shields," Akela blurted.

“Shut up and make one!” Nydo snarled.

Akela dropped the voltage bar and clapped his hands together, before opening them to create a strong barrier between him and his brother and the Resistance. Blaster bolts rained onto the surface, but it didn't budge. 

"Wait for it," Nydo murmured. He held his arms up, which made it almost appear that he was forming the shield. Akela resisted the urge to smirk since he knew it wasn't true. 

They were all watching him, which was a mistake. 

When they landed under the pipe in front of the shield, Nydo slashed the air over his head. 

Water burst from the pipes, soaking the Resistance fighters. Akela barely had time to fully realize what was happening and lift the shield up enough to make sure he and his brother stayed dry. 

The soldiers all scrambled back, clearly expecting something worse than water to come out of the pipes. It wasn't even that hot, but that hadn't been the point. Before the Resistance, insurgents could do more than look around in confusion. Akela flicked the switch on the staff on his hand and dropped it into the closest corner of the puddle. 

He and his brother didn't look back.

They raced down the hallway, now again weaponless. They raced down the hall, now again weaponless. Around them, the sounds of blaster fire, shouting, and general chaos. Every hallway they passed seemed like a new opportunity for death and destruction.

"We need to find someone in charge," Nydo said, looking around. 

Red emergency lights began flashing overhead. Akela looked up to see that the battle stations had been called. 

They had no battle stations. Technically, they were still on medical leave. They were supposed to report to the medical bay in order to be kept safe from the fighting, but when Akela looked into Nydo's dark eyes, he knew there was no way he and his brother would run away right now. Instead of heading towards the bow, where the medical quarters were, they continued in the opposite direction. 

They seemed to be in a maze of now-abandoned offices and meeting spaces. They technically could try to hide here, but if they were going to be reprimanded for disobeying directions, they might as well make it worth someone's while.

"Where's the fighting?" Nydo grumbled.

"Hang on," Akela said suddenly. He kneeled down, pressing his hands to the floor. He opened his mind to the Force and felt that same strong cord in his palm. This time, however, instead of moving the floor or affecting anything in it, the cable immediately seemed to unwind into an infinite number of tendrils that spread out and raced in every direction. Akela could feel emptiness in all of the rooms around them, save one small figure overwhelmed, and awash with abject terror. Akela placed his attention there for just a moment, focusing in on a few tendrils the way a spider might listen to and feel a single thread in a web. When he brushed the tendrils against the figure, he was almost unbalanced by the fear that seemed to be drowning the officer in question. Content that it was merely a coward nad, not an injured person, Akela removed his focus from him and turned back to searching in an ever-expanding circle around him. 

One of the tendrils, ahead of where he was facing, finally reached a main hallway and was suddenly overwhelmed by absolute carnage. Akela jerked his hand up, breaking the strands of sensation and attention, then pointed ahead, "straight ahead. I think we'll have to make one right or left at the last minute, but it's almost directly in front of us."

"Let's go," Nydo said. He helped Akela to his feet, then the pair of them hurried down the hallway.

"We don't have any weapons," Akela whispered.

"You think we're going to find any in here?" Nydo asked, gesturing around.

"Worth a shot."

Nydo shrugged and opened an empty office. There was a holo display and a small projector on a desk, complete with a chair and a softer chair pushed in one corner. This office was particularly sparse but had a deliberate feel to it, like whoever occupied had chosen and arranged everything with regimented attention to detail. 

Akela swept the room with his eyes, but, seeing nothing, leaned back out the door.

"Hang on," Nydo said softly, his eyes falling onto a tiered shelving unit next to the desk.

"I'm not carrying that around with me," Akela said, sharing at the boxy and solid metal shelves.

"We don't need the whole thing," Nydo said. He walked over and leaned over the back of the shelves, pulling it a hair away from the wall and reaching behind, "just-" he closed his eyes, biting his lip. Akela felt the Force wash over both of them, tugging at Akela's consciousness just a little bit. He'd never tried to follow it, but he almost wondered what would happen if he did. If he just surrendered to the Force and let it sweep him away to whenever it was going. 

After the mental equivalent of having his hair rustled by a breeze, Akela Forced himself to focus on what Nydo was doing. Before he could move, though, a metallic crack and a pop broke the silence of the room. With a satisfied 'ha!', Nydo lifted up a metal pipe as big as his thumb and as high as his waist.

"The spine," Akela said, realizing Nydo must have been touching the back bracing of the bookcase. The owner probably wasn't going to love the loss of stability, but war was war. 

"Let's go," Nydo said, "we'll check the next office."

"Great," Akela said. They stepped into the hallway. As Akela glanced left, he saw a flicker of motion just in time to throw up a shield.

Projectiles- not blaster bolts, but actual metal projectiles of some kind- glanced off the shield.

"Run, let's go!" Akela said, running backward as fast as he could while maintaining the shield. Luckily, the metal bounced off the shield, rather than being absorbed as bolts sometimes were. They peppered his shield, but he heard cries of pain as the resistance soldiers were struck with them instead. 

"Turning!" Nydo warned, grabbing the back of Akela's shirt and dragging him and the shield around a corner.

Akela looked over his shoulder and saw what they'd been looking for: absolute chaos. 

Lines of stormtroopers had been boxed in by pockets of Resistance insurgents. From what he could tell, the rebels had just managed to place themselves in such a way that they had covered down side hallways, but could not be boxed in, outmaneuvered, or flanked. It was infuriating to watch, but Akela found he had a grudging respect for them. 

He wanted them all dead and gone, but he could respect how they'd managed to make use of the administrative spaces on this level and in this sector. 

"Do you see any knights?" Nydo asked as he poked his head into the hallway, trying to get a lay of the land beyond.

"No, just troopers," Akela said, "the knights may but up or down a floor, depending on how many rebels managed to get in."

Nydo grumbled, "how are they doing?"

"Not well," Akela said.

"Let's see if we can't even the odds," Nydo suggested. He jumped into the hallway and grabbed a fallen or discarded blaster. Squaring his shoulders for the space of a heartbeat, he aimed and pulled the trigger, hitting a Resistance fighter from between two Stormtroopers. One of the troopers fell anyway, already shot in the chest, but so did the rebel. 

"We've got to get to the front!" Akela said, looking around as he rushed through the hallway. There was general rubble and misshapen lumps on the ground that he Forced himself to ignore, but their path was mostly free from actual combat. 

Akela stumbled immediately but threw his hands up with a grunt. The impact smarted, but otherwise, he was fine. When he saw what he'd tripped over, however, his heart fell. 

It was a stormtrooper, dead. They were flat on their back, helmet half melted. Nydo crouched next to Akela, "come on, get up, you're okay."

Akela nodded, getting to his feet. He looked around, his blood rushing in his ears as the stakes suddenly bore down on him. 

The war was here.

Akela looked down and saw a two-handed blaster at his feet where the dead stormtrooper had dropped it. He picked it up and began to wade over and past the fallen bodies, Nydo behind him. 

Something snagged his attention, and he hesitated. When he turned to look across the hallway's expanse, he saw an invader peek around the corner. Immediately, Akela raised his weapon and fired, catching the sullastan in the face. 

Nydo, who was several paces ahead now, turned and fired twice at one of the sullastan's companions, but missed. Akela made use of the cover to find what had caught his attention.

There it was.

One of the bodies on the floor was still alive. Akela stepped between two bodies, cautiously crossing to the clever, but not clever enough, Resistance insurgent. When he reached them, he quickly raised his weapon and aimed it at them. 

"You're not clever enough to fool me," Akela said flatly. 

Black eyes snapped open just before Akela shot the fighter in the chest.

Lines of stormtroopers had been boxed in by pockets of Resistance insurgents. From what he could tell, the rebels had just managed to place themselves in such a way that they had cover down side hallways, but could not be boxed in, outmaneuvered, or flanked. It was infuriating to watch, but Akela found he had a grudging respect for them. 

He wanted them all dead and gone, but he could respect how they'd managed to make use of the administrative spaces on this level and in this sector. 

"Do you see any knights?" Nydo asked as he poked his head into the hallway, trying to get a lay of the land beyond.

"No, just troopers," Akela said, "the knights may but up or down a floor, depending on how many rebels managed to get in."

Nydo grumbled, "how are they doing?"

"Not well," Akela said.

"Let's see if we can't even the odds," Nydo suggested. He jumped into the hallway and grabbed a fallen or discarded blaster. Squaring his shoulders for the space of a heartbeat, he aimed and pulled the trigger, hitting a Resistance fighter from between two Stormtroopers. One of the troopers fell anyway, already shot in the chest, but so did the rebel. 

"We've got to get to the front!" Akela said, looking around as he rushed through the hallway. There was general rubble and misshapen lumps on the ground that he Forced himself to ignore, but their path was mostly free from actual combat. 

They started up the hallway, almost capable of reaching the fighting itself and the point where they could be helpful when the entire world exploded again.

Nydo grunted, bracing himself against a wall with curses gritted from behind his clenched teeth. Akela, meanwhile, was knocked off of his feet and landed hard on the body of a stormtrooper. Their blaster, still halfway clutched in their hand, clipped his cheek and narrowly missed his eye. Akela grunted, rolling away a little and groaning with the pain. Fury bubbled up in him as he looked down at his hands, covered in dust and debris.

"Will you **stop** with the explosions!? We're in space!!" Akela bellowed at no one in particular. 

"Are you okay?" Nydo asked, coughing.

"Fine," Akela said. He looked around behind him, but there were no new bodies, just a crater in the hole of an office wall, from what he could see.

"Let's go," Akela said, turning back to Nydo, "they're all dead or out of reach." 

They half waded through the destruction before Akela died.

Well, no, he didn't die. 

Something else, something somehow worse happened, he presumed. If he had died, he would have surrendered to the Force and, from what he had heard, would not feel any more pain. 

This was pain beyond any level that he'd ever experienced. It seemed to envelop his entire left arm, racing up into his shoulder and wrapping around his face and chest. He had to be dead because this was fire internalized. It was as if his heart and lungs and face and brain had become a lightsaber all at once, and it was horrific.

"Akela! Akela!"

It was Nydo.

"Yeah, yeah, it's me. You have to get up. You were shot with- I don't even know what, but you're not injured, you just hurt, I promise."

No, he wasn't . He was dead. He was in the worst hell that the worst religion on the worst planet could come up with.

"You're being way too much of a smartass to be dead, come on. Let me try and-"

The world cleared a little. It felt like Akela had been underwater, and then someone had grabbed him and hauled him to the surface and up to clear, fresh air. He coughed with the shock of the transition, looking around.

"Yeah, good. I wasn't sure that would work. Come on. Let's go," Nydo smiled, relief pouring off of him in waves that were so strong that Akela didn't have to tap into their bond at all. It was written in the arch of his eyebrow and the way his shoulders sunk just a little bit. 

"We've got to help," Nydo said. He lifted Akela all the way to his feet, then pressed the pipe from earlier into his hand, "come on. You take this and I'll find something else."

"Where are we going?" Akela asked weakly.

"Away from them. You need help. You- yeah, your words are slurring just a little, still. It'll take time before what I did will take hold."

"What did you do?"

"I'll tell you later, not walk." 

Nydo put himself to Akela's right, letting Akela both hide behind him and letting him protect Akela by shooting anything not dressed in white or black that moved.

Every step they took was agonizing. 

"What's happening?" Akela mumbled.

"What do you mean?" Nydo panted. 

"I mean, why are they here?"

"The Resistance?"

"Yeah, it's stupid.," Akela wrinkled his nose even as his thoughts began to focus more. 

"Stupid?"

"We outnumber them, and we're on our own ships," Akela blinked, trying to clear his head a bit more. 

"You're right," Nydo said. He suddenly stopped and looked at Akela, his eyebrows furrowed. He dropped his brother, even as blaster bolts glanced off the walls and floor around them. 

"What was that for?"

"Tell me where you were injured," Nydo said, pointing at him.

"What?" 

"I'm serious. Point where on your body you were shot."

"I- my arm," Akela reached up to delicately pluck at his sleeve and look for some kind of burn or tear in his sleeve but found nothing. When he peeked down the shoulder, he saw no sign of damage, "my left arm hurt so much, but there's no…

"When you felt through the Force, and you got here, what exactly did you sense?"

"Chaos. It was just a mess within the Force. Impossible to untangle," Akela said, "why?"

The corner of Nydo's mouth lifted, "but did you actually sense any _Force signatures_?"

"I-" Akela leaned against the wall, trying to retrace the path he'd sensed. It had been empty office after empty office, only interrupted by an absolute bundle of fear. He'd attributed it to some coward hiding under a desk, but now that he thought about it, he'd never actually sensed whether the thing he'd been inspecting was actually alive. Objects didn't hold intense emotions, so it was a foregone conclusion that anything overrun with fear had to be alive, but now that he really thought about it, he realized it wasn't. It was like somehow, fear itself had been curled into a ball and placed there for him to find. 

At the end of the hallway, when he'd reached the place where they were standing, he'd found the same thing again, more or less. He'd stumbled into a veritable river of fear, pain, adrenaline, anger, hatred, and desperation that was so loud and muddled that he hadn't actually noticed the glaring absence of individual signatures. 

Even the Resistance fighter he'd supposedly killed wasn't clear or sharp like they should be. 

For one, now that Akela thought about it, he couldn't remember that they looked like. When he tried to picture the face he'd looked into before he'd pulled the trigger, individual features seemed to slide away. If he recalled the shape of his mouth, then her eyes seemed to blur away. When he focused on the exact shade of green, their eyes had been, then his hair seemed to fade into the background. 

"There's no Force signatures," Akela said. 

"Hang on," Nydo said, looking around thoughtfully. Akela didn't need to look into Nydo's mind to know he was thinking at a million parsecs a minute. He could practically hear the whirring of his brain's mental core. Nydo was torn between the realism of the situation and the strangeness of it all.

"What does that 'trooper look like?" Akela asked, pointing to a helmetless figure lying past them. 

"Like, tall and light-skinned?" Nydo asked, peering past two bodies to the one Akela was pointing to. 

"What color are his eyes?" Akela asked.

"Blue."

"His hair?"

"Brown," Nydo turned to look back at Akela, his eyes searching his face and his eyebrows furrowing. 

"What about his eyes?" Akela asked quickly.

"Brown, why are you-?" 

"You just said blue," Akela said, pointing to the figure again. 

Nydo whirled around and looked down at the now black-haired figure at the floor, "what the kriff is happening?"

"I don't know, but something is wrong," Akela said. He looked around, then saw a Resistance fighter drawing down on him. He opened his arms, praying to the Force he wasn't wrong, "hey! Hey you! Shoot me! Shoot me ag-"

Pain exploded in his chest, dropping him to his knees. He gasped, nearly retching as it raced up to his face and down his stomach. Thankfully, it stopped before it reached his pelvis, fading before it utterly incapacitated him.

"Kriff, you are so lucky that worked," Nydo said.

"I really am," Akela squeaked, "but now we know."

Taking deep breaths and trying to remind himself that he was alright. He pressed a hand to his chest, confirming he was unharmed. Touching his chest didn't even hurt. Finally, he straightened, "so, where do we go from here?"

Nydo looked around. His mouth twisted, and Akela was fairly sure he was running his tongue over his teeth, which he tended to do when he was deep in thought. Akela just waited, occasionally glancing blaster bolts off of the pipe. They were harmless, but he didn't feel like getting himself shot in the face or somewhere even more precious. 

"Where's the training room, relative to here?" Nydo finally asked.

"That way," Akela said, pointing.

"So, we've been moving sternward and deeper into the heart of the ship this whole time?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"All of the Resistance fighters have been on that side," he gestured to the far side of the hallway, "with the stormtroopers fighting over- gah! That hurts!" Nydo doubled over, clutching his left arm as a stay bolt caught him in his bicep. 

"Right?" Akela said, gesturing at Nydo's arm. He hadn't purposefully let it free, but he wasn't crying over it, "Come on, look for damage. Once you realize there isn't any, it gets easier." 

Nydo groaned, standing straight, "kriffing kriff, that hurt."

"Yeah," Akela looked around, taking in the supposed carnage around them, "the stormtroopers are always in front of us, behind us, or on our right." 

"But they only give in front of us," Nydo said, jerking his head ahead of them, "the ones behind us only move closer. The ones to our right haven't moved." 

"And?"

"We're being herded," Nydo said.

"Why?" Akela asked.

"If I knew, I would have told you, I swear," Nydo said, rolling his eyes.

Akela blocked another blaster bolt, "there's only two reasons you herd animals: to get them to safety or to prepare them for slaughter. Which is happening here?"

Nydo said nothing for a moment, his mouth twisting in thought again," considering, as you said, about how expensive we are, I'm going to assume it's 'to safety' of some kind. If they'd wanted to slaughter us, they didn't have to wait and spend more than a hundred thousand credits on each of us."

"Looks like we need to go sternward and inward, then," Akela said. 

Nydo nodded, still thinking. 

"How are we doing to do this?" Akela asked, looking around. He frowned, leaning away from blaster bolts that grazed the wall. They weren't dangerous or harmful, but they hurt immensely. 

"Keep going," Nydo said.

"How do we break through the illusion?" Akela asked.

"Do you think you can sense the difference between any Force signature and the general illusion? From here on out, could you tell the difference?" Nydo asked.

"Absolutely," Akela said.

"Good," Nydo looked around at the objects around them, then rolled his eyes, "of course, none of this is real. Well, actually, probably is," he held up the rod they'd taken, "we probably vandalized some poor administrator's office for no reason."

"We'll apologize later," Akela said, shrugging helplessly, "how do we- why are you taking your shirt off?"

Nydo paused, one arm still halfway through the armhole of his shirt, "I need my undershirt."

"And why do you need your undershirt?"

"I'm making a blindfold," Nydo explained. He pulled his gray undershirt off, then pulled his outer black shirt back on. 

Akela wrinkled his nose. They'd spent hours training in these shirts. 

"Would you rather be stuck in this thing?" Nydo asked, waving around at the battle that supposedly still raged around them.

Akela groaned, pulling his own shirt over his head. It didn't help that he wasn't as muscular as his brother, either. Whenever Nydo worked out with his shirt off, he had muscle definition, but Akela had only gotten rid of the fat over his abdomen and his face. 

Akela pulled his shirt back on, then grabbed his undershirt, looking at Nydo for confirmation, "if this is you just kriffing with me, I'm going to murder you." 

Nydo smirked but merely lifted his undershirt, pulling at the straps, so it stretched long enough to go around his head. Akela rolled his eyes one last time, then put his own shirt over his eyes. He opened his hand, putting out a strand of The Force, aimed at the pipe, and yanked it into his palm. 

"Let's go," Nydo said.

Akela opened his mind fully to the Force. The effect was immediate. First, his connection to his brother became nearly complete. Thoughts and impressions passed between them like they were one person. It was a bit off to sense  
four feet on the ground at once, but his mind absorbed it in a moment. It might become a problem if they had to do anything more than walk, but they close the bond, at least partially, when they wanted to. It seemed prudent to leave it open for now.  
Outside of the bond, that deeply entrenched and tightly bound tether to his brother, Akela felt like he was in a kind of wind tunnel. Around him, within the Force, he was buffeted by a deafening mix of emotions and reactions but could sense no one. There was nothing actually organic here, just an array of midichlorians all thrown into a thousand different patterns. 

Akela took another deep breath, trying to find the boundaries of the chaotic midichlorians. Eventually, he did. It was a clever illusion, now that he saw behind it. Whoever had designed this scenario hadn't bounded the illusion simply in this hallway. The energy spilled over into many of the hallways beyond, but also into the midichlorians in the walls of the hallway itself. Creating something that was part of the illusion in all directions was incredibly clever. If Akela hadn't encountered part of the illusion that needed to have a physical analog, they might never have realized it was fake. 

The pain had been very real, but the damage is what revealed the trick. 

As they walked, Akela heard an incredible array of crashes, screams, and the zipping of blaster bolts that felt like they'd passed right by his head. Now he understood exactly why Nydo had wanted a blindfold: apparently, when a visual illusion lost you visually, it would start doing everything it could to get you to open your eyes. 

More than once, Akela's eyes jolted open, only kept shut by his blindfold. He could tell every time Nydo experienced the same thing. Whenever he was started by a particularly frightening or targeted sound, their bond seemed suddenly full of bright orangey-yellow flashes, like shock given shape. Carefully, they walked down the hallway. After several minutes of trying to check for bodies or impediments and finding none, Akela finally asked: "have you actually hit anything with your foot this entire time?"

"I haven't," Nydo said, stopping in his place. 

"What if we just walk normally?" Akela suggested.

"It's hard to, with the Force as chaotic as it is," Nydo said. 

That was true. Everything in the Force seemed to be moving and uneven, even under their very feet.

"The wall," Akela took a step closer, letting his palm touched the smooth surface, "if we can't see the illusion, we can't feel it, either. This means the left wall will be clear and in the right direction."

Akela heard a light slap and smiled. Now, when they walked, the slow rustle of skin on a smooth surface joined the sounds of shouting, blasterfire, and the occasional explosion. They, meanwhile, jogged down the hallway, making a ridiculous picture to whoever was crafting this illusion. 

As they went, the illusion became darker, richer, and more chaotic. Akela was sure this would have taken hours or days to get through if they hadn't found it. If the Force itself was becoming more challenging to bear the more they turned sternward, then inward, then sternward, then inward again, the illusions would have been more painful and real. 

Just when it seemed like things couldn't get any louder, it all stopped. 

Akela leaned against the wall, ears ringing from the sudden change in noise. The eerie silence was worse than the chaos. He rubbed his ears, then croaked, "where are we?"

Something rustled next to him as Nydo took off his blindfold, he guessed, "there's nothing to see. The illusion is gone. There's just these doors."

Akela reached up and yanked his blindfold off, then looked up at a pair of massive black stone doors. He stood straighter, carefully walking over and looking at them intently. They were polished to such a level that he could see his face reflected in them. 

"I found out why we've been herded," Nydo said flatly.

Akela snorted, then did something very brave and very stupid: he placed his palm on the left-hand door. 

Pain raced up his arm as his elbow and shoulder stiffened, locking into place. The material under his skin vibrated, shaking and humming louder and louder until both he and the walls around him seemed to shake, too. Something tugged behind his navel and, shouting, he pulled against it, using the Force to resist the tether trying to drag more of him against the stone. 

_**One last test of strength,**_ That same voice, the one who helped him whenever he was stuck or confused, promised.

Akela gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. Shoring himself up, he drew energy from whatever lay beyond his exhaustion and frustration, letting it flow into his arm and his stomach as he took the thing pulling him and pulled _back_ , yanking it and the door open along with it. 

Akela stopped when the door opened enough for Nydo to sip through. He followed in the instant before the door shut on him, then whirled around immediately, panting as Nydo looked ahead. 

"Welcome, my sons," a voice said. 

Akela turned, and his mouth fell open. He and Nydo had ended up in a kind of massive antechamber within the bowels of the ship. It reminded him of both a cave and a throne room. They'd entered onto a large platform, but there was a walkway the jutted out from it, hanging in space before a massive hologram. 

The figure on the hologram was a massive, bald, and pale humanoid that looked somehow part human and part muun. There was something odd about his appearance, outside of the ruined look off his face. There was something underneath it all that did not sit well with Akela, although he wasn't sure _why_.

It did not sit well, that was until the figure spoke again.

"Step forward. I have waited a long time to meet you this way." 

Nydo and Akela tightened their grips on their weapons automatically, looking up at the massive hologram and preparing for the worst. Was this another test? Had this _all_ been a test?

"I have a gift for you if you can make use of it," the figure said seriously, "I am Supreme Leader Snoke. I have been overseeing your training and your recovery ever since your father died." 

"You're the Voice," Akela murmured.

"I am," Supreme Leader Snoke said, nodded. He smiled. It twisted his face even further and didn't quite reach his eyes, but Akela wondered if that was just due to the tissue that appeared to be missing in his cheek under his left eye. 

"You've heard him, too?" Nydo asked, looking at Akela.

"Yeah," Akela said, not taking his eyes from Snoke, "he helped me whenever I-"

"Didn't know anything, yeah," Nydo said, nodding and smiling.

Akela looked up into the face of the benefactor who had helped them so much, but something glinted below, and it caught his eye. 

It was a small pile of shattered black and silver, twisted metal and shards of other material he couldn't name. He dropped his weapon and ran over to it, picking up one of the pieces gingerly. 

"This is-"

"It is your father's helmet, yes," Snoke said gravely, "you two have proven yourself worthy of the Dark Side, but we shall see if you can it and can use it together."

Akela stood shakily, swallowing back the fury that seemed to be closing his throat. He immediately raised a hand. Fury pounded through him, curling in his chest. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, roaring. 

Nydo stepped next to him, shaking with rage. His hands, however, were steady and focused. He raised both, lifting all of the silver metal shards, bending and twisting them until they fused back together. 

Underneath, Akela began talking the shattered matte black, placing the pieces together just as he remembered and forcing the edges of the material to heat and fuse together. Akela had never been able to multitask like this with the Force, but now he had a . The edges of the black material glowed red under his attention, rebuilding the frame that he'd seen so many times. He had grown up with it. It was like being asked to draw his father's very face from memory. 

He may not be able to read the way he once could.

He may not remember the mother he'd lost so long ago.

But he _knew_ what to do now.

The mended and superheated silver metal above his own work descended slowly, curling around the edges in the black material and giving structure to the eyes again. Without even trying, he knew the ventilation system inside would be mended perfectly. Nydo was much better at this kind of detailed work, but Akela didn't care.

There was no room for jealousy here.

Only rage-fueled into retribution.

After spending two minutes in what felt like a hurricane of fire, Akela lowered his hand. He and his brother stared wordlessly at their masterpiece before them. They hadn't seen their father's helmet since the accident, when they'd been struck down, almost alongside him. 

But now it was whole again, pieces still glowing from where the red-hot material was still cooling and resealing. 

It was done.

Akela looked at Nydo and smiled. His brother sighed and almost smiled, but before they could do anything, pain exploded throughout Akela's entire body. He shrieked, falling forward. He barely had a moment to throw his hands up and catch himself before he landed directly on his face. 

"I am sorry to do this to you, my young apprentices, but you have not understood the full depth of your loss," Snoke's voice was clear and direct, but there a note of regret underneath, "you were once apprentices of the Dark Side. You and your father were skilled knights, but in the battle that took your father from you, your connection to the Dark Side was disrupted. I have been shielding you from the full scope of these consequences, but now, you've recovered enough to fully experience it all."

Akela pressed his cheek to the cool floor, letting out a wheezing breath. A moment later, the pain vanished. Nydo coughed and let out a retching sound next to him, but Akela didn't hear the sound of contact, so he presumed it was a reaction to the pain. It was one that he could understand, though. His legs burned, and his chest ached every time he took a breath. It felt like hundreds of tiny bands were being flicked or snapped in high thighs, and his head pounded from where he'd struck the ground. Akela shuddered, closing his eyes tightly before slowly raising himself up to a seated position.

"Thank you, Supreme Leader," Nydo croaked. 

Akela moved from a seated position and, despite the screaming pain in his legs, kneeled before the Supreme Leader Snoke. Next to him, Nydo grunted and did the same. Blinking away uncontrollable tears of pain, Akela looked up into the face of Supreme Leader Snoke. The one who had saved them, had returned him to himself, had trained his father for so many years, and who would give him the revenge he sought. 

"The traitor, FN 2187, who dares to call himself Finn Alucard, and Rey Jedi, have killed your father." The Supreme Leader said gravely, his face twisting at the names' Finn Alucard' and 'Rey Jedi.'

Akela's jaw clenched, but he did not speak. All of the pain of the previous minutes seemed to disappear as Father's helmet levitated in the air above them, right at the height it would have been if he had been wearing it. 

"My faithful apprentice managed to slay Luke Skywalker, Rey Jedi, and Jonas Quorvin before he fell, but was unable to kill Alucard or Gida' smoo. I have not sent any other knights after them because it is your right. They killed your father and nearly killed you. Their deaths are up to you. Nydo and Akela Ren, you will finish the work laid out by your ancestors. Rise and avenge your father: Kylo Ren."


End file.
